The bombings of the peacekeeping barracks in Beirut are sabotage actions directed against US and French military units that performed a peacekeeping mission in Lebanon during the local civil war of 1975-1990 . One of the largest sabotage attacks in recent history - 307 people have become victims.
The bombings of the barracks of peacekeepers in Beirut | |
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Part of the Civil War in Lebanon | |
A pillar of smoke over the headquarters of the US Marine Corps in Beirut. October 23, 1983 | |
Overview Information | |
Place of attack | |
date | October 16, 1983 06:22 |
Attack mode | car bomb blast |
Weapons | explosive car ( car bomb ) |
Dead | 307 : 241 US military, 58 French paratroopers [1] , 6 civilians, 2 suicide bombers |
Wounded | 75 |
The organizers | Free Islamic Revolutionary Movement |
Content
Marines in Lebanon
The civil war in Lebanon has been going on intermittently since 1975 . On June 6, 1982, the Israeli army invaded the country, whose mission was to destroy the infrastructure of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon, including its headquarters in Beirut . The two-month siege of Beirut ended with the forced evacuation of the PLO from the country, but its local allies remained and continued their participation in the conflict.
On September 14, the newly elected Lebanese President Bashir Gemayel was killed in a terrorist attack. In response, the Israeli army entered West Beirut , which, after the PLO’s departure, had no one to defend, under the pretext of warning of possible unrest. Falangist Christians from the Kataib Party, Israel’s local allies, took advantage of this to avenge the Palestinians for the Damur massacre in 1976 by entering the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilah and killing hundreds of civilians. After that, to restore stability, international peacekeeping forces were deployed to the country as part of military units of the United States , France , Italy and the United Kingdom .
The American contingent consisted of one battalion of marines stationed in a large four-story building on the territory of the Beirut International Airport . Marines took a neutral position in the conflict, as evidenced by a number of incidents between them and the Israeli army, in one of which an American officer stopped the advance of an Israeli tank column, threatening to use weapons [2] . At the end of August 1983, the situation in Lebanon sharply worsened. Increasingly, exchanges of fire broke out between the warring parties, and the positions of the marines began to be subjected to constant mortar shelling, as a result of which the peacekeepers suffered losses.
Explosions
At about 6.20 am on Sunday morning, on October 23, 1983, a Mercedes-Benz truck drove into the territory of the Beirut airport. He looked like a truck delivering water to the headquarters of the marines, so he did not arouse suspicion among the sentries. The truck drove around the headquarters twice, then suddenly sped up and headed for the unlocked rear gate. The sentries opened fire with a delay, because according to the rules of engagement for a peacekeeping operation in Lebanon, they kept their weapons unloaded. A truck broke through a barbed wire fence, a gate, and crashed into a building [3] [4] [5] .
The truck was loaded with more than 5 tons of TNT explosives. As a result of the explosion, the building of the headquarters of the marines completely collapsed, burying under the rubble of 400 sleeping American soldiers. About 20 seconds after the explosion, the headquarters of the French peacekeepers, which was also destroyed, was subjected to a similar attack [6] [7] [5] .
Victims
Rescue work on the wreckage lasted for several days, despite the fact that the soldiers who had demolished the rubble were periodically subjected to sniper fire.
As a result of the terrorist attacks on the headquarters of the American and French peacekeeping contingents, 241 US soldiers [8] and 58 French soldiers were killed. The attack on the barracks of the marines in Beirut remains the most deadly attack on US citizens outside the country after the end of World War II .
Implications
The sites of the terrorist attacks were visited by US Vice President George W. Bush and French President Francois Mitterrand . The leaderships of the United States and France have firmly declared their intentions to continue the peacekeeping operation in Lebanon, despite the losses.
The organizers of the attacks remained unknown. The Shiite Free Islamic Revolutionary Movement (essentially not an organization until 1985 ) claimed responsibility for the attacks. On November 4, a suicide bomber rammed the Israeli counterintelligence headquarters in Tire , resulting in the death of approximately 30 Israelis and the same number of Lebanese prisoners. On November 17, French aircraft bombed the positions of Shiite militants and Iranian "guards of the Islamic revolution" in the Baalbek valley, which was retribution for the French headquarters bombing. The United States did not take any response against the alleged organizers of the explosion [9] .
In February 1984, the United States, France, Italy and the United Kingdom withdrew their troops from Lebanon, in which the October 23 attacks played a significant role. Hezbollah (in particular, Imad Mugniy ) and Iran standing behind it were suspected of organizing the attacks, but in 2001 Caspar Weinberger , who was US Secretary of Defense during the Lebanese operation, admitted that there is still no reliable information about the organizers of the attacks [10] . However, in 2003, the US District Judge Reuss Lambert ruled on the suit of the families of the dead servicemen, accusing the Islamic Republic of Iran of preparing the rally. As evidence, there was a message intercepted by the National Security Agency from the Iranian intelligence headquarters in Tehran to the Iranian ambassador in Damascus , in which the ambassador was asked to contact the leader of the Lebanese Shiite movement Amal to prepare a “spectacular action” against US marines [11] .
Some authors have compared the explosion of the Beirut barracks with the attacks of September 11, 2001 . Bob Jordan, founder of the Beirut Veterans of America organization, said: “Beirut was the first major attack in the course of what now became World War III” [12] .
Notes
- ↑ Archived copy (inaccessible link) . The appeal date is February 25, 2015. Archived April 2, 2015. List of dead and injured paratroopers by rank in the regiment (1st and 9th, respectively)
- ↑ Although the United States and Israel are strategic allies, after the siege of Beirut, relations between them were extremely strained due to significant casualties among the Lebanese civilians, which caused international protests and criticism of the United States and Israel.
- ↑ Martin, David C. and John Walcott. The Best of War Against Terrorism . New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1988. Pp. xxii, 392. ISBN 0-06-015877-8 . p. 125
- ↑ Hammel, Eric M. (1985). The Root: The Marines in Beirut, August 1982-February 1984. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. ISBN 978-0-15-179006-7 ., Op. cit. pp. 293-94.
- ↑ 1 2 Lebanese Civil War 1983 - 1984
- ↑ Peterson v. Islamic Republic of Iran, US District Court for the District of Columbia (PDF). Perles Law Firm (2003). The date of circulation is December 23, 2014. Archived May 5, 2006.
- ↑ CNN.com - Transcripts
- ↑ This figure is given by all the most reliable sources. Sometimes you can meet several other numbers, in particular, 243 dead.
- ↑ The famous air attack on the position of Syrian air defense in Lebanon on December 4, 1983 was a response to the shelling of American aircraft and was not even declared by the American leadership as an act of retaliation for the explosion of the barracks.
- ↑ frontline: target america: interviews: caspar weinberger, late September 2001
- ↑ David Kay Rebukes Washington Post
- Net Blowup in Beirut: US Marines Peacekeeping Mission Turns Deadly »HistoryNet Archive dated September 30, 2007 on Wayback Machine
Bibliography
- M. Sturua. View of Washington from the Watergate Hotel. - M .: Politizdat, 1984. - p. 271.
See also
- The explosion of the building of the Israeli military administration in the city of Tire
- Civil war in lebanon