The 1998 United States embassy bombings were attacks that occurred on August 7, 1998. More than 200 people were killed in nearly simultaneous
truck bomb
A car bomb, bus bomb, lorry bomb, or truck bomb, also known as a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED), is an improvised explosive device designed to be detonated in an automobile or other vehicles.
Car bombs can be roughly divided ...
explosions in two
East Africa
East Africa, Eastern Africa, or East of Africa, is the eastern subregion of the African continent. In the United Nations Statistics Division scheme of geographic regions, 10-11-(16*) territories make up Eastern Africa:
Due to the historical ...
n cities, one at the
United States Embassy
The United States has the second most diplomatic missions of any country in the world after Mainland China, including 166 of the 193 member countries of the United Nations, as well as observer state Vatican City and non-member countries Kosovo a ...
in
Dar es Salaam,
Tanzania
Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands and ...
, the other at the
United States Embassy
The United States has the second most diplomatic missions of any country in the world after Mainland China, including 166 of the 193 member countries of the United Nations, as well as observer state Vatican City and non-member countries Kosovo a ...
in
Nairobi
Nairobi ( ) is the capital and largest city of Kenya. The name is derived from the Maasai phrase ''Enkare Nairobi'', which translates to "place of cool waters", a reference to the Nairobi River which flows through the city. The city proper ha ...
,
Kenya
)
, national_anthem = "Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu"()
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, image_map2 =
, capital = Nairobi
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, largest_city = Nairobi
, ...
.
Fazul Abdullah Mohammed
Fazul Abdullah Mohammed ( ar, فاضل عبدالله محمد) (25 August 1972 – 8 June 2011, also known as Fadil Harun) was a Comorian-Kenyan member of al-Qaeda, and the leader of its presence in East Africa. Mohammed was born in Mor ...
and
Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah were credited with being the masterminds behind the bombings.
Motivation and preparation
The bombings are widely believed to have been revenge for U.S. involvement in the extradition, and alleged torture, of four members of
Egyptian Islamic Jihad
The Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ, ar, الجهاد الإسلامي المصري), formerly called simply Islamic Jihad ( ar, الجهاد الإسلامي, links=no) and the Liberation Army for Holy Sites, originally referred to as al-Jihad, and ...
(EIJ) who had been arrested in Albania in the two months prior to the attacks for a
series of murders in Egypt. Between June and July,
Ahmad Isma'il 'Uthman Saleh,
Ahmad Ibrahim al-Sayyid al-Naggar Ahmad Ibrahim al-Sayyid al-Naggar was a member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, an Islamist terrorist group active since the 1970s. The ADL dubbed him the "propaganda chief" of the militant organisation. He was one of 14 people subjected to extraordi ...
,
Shawqi Salama Mustafa Atiya
Shawqi Salama Mustafa Atiya (شوقي سلامة مصطفى عطيه) is an alleged militant leader within al-Jihad, and ran the Albanian office for the group. He was one of 14 people subjected to extraordinary rendition by the CIA prior to the 20 ...
and
Mohamed Hassan Tita Mohamed Hassan Tita was a member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad who was living in Albania. He was one of 14 people subjected to extraordinary rendition by the CIA prior to the 2001 declaration of a War on Terror.
He was ostensibly linked to the 199 ...
were all
renditioned from Albania to Egypt, with the co-operation of the United States; the four men were accused of participating in the assassination of
Rifaat el-Mahgoub Rifat (also transliterated as Rifaat, ar, رفعت, , a conjugated form of the Arabic verb رفع with the meaning "lifted", "elated", "joyous") is a masculine name. Variants also include Refat, Rafat, Refaat, etc. Notable people with the name i ...
, as well as a later plot against the
Khan el-Khalili
Khan el-Khalili ( ar, خان الخليلي) is a famous bazaar and souq (or ''souk'') in the historic center of Cairo, Egypt. Established as a center of trade in the Mamluk era and named for one of its several historic caravanserais, the b ...
market in Cairo.
The following month, a communique was issued warning the United States that a "response" was being prepared to "repay" them for their interference. However, the
9/11 Commission Report
''The 9/11 Commission Report'' (officially the ''Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States)'' is the official report into the events leading up to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. It was prepa ...
claims that preparations began shortly after bin Laden issued his February 1998
fatwa.
According to journalist
Lawrence Wright
Lawrence Wright (born August 2, 1947) is an American writer and journalist, who is a staff writer for ''The New Yorker'' magazine, and fellow at the Center for Law and Security at the New York University School of Law. Wright is best known as th ...
, the Nairobi operation was named after the Holy
Kaaba
The Kaaba (, ), also spelled Ka'bah or Kabah, sometimes referred to as al-Kaʿbah al-Musharrafah ( ar, ٱلْكَعْبَة ٱلْمُشَرَّفَة, lit=Honored Ka'bah, links=no, translit=al-Kaʿbah al-Musharrafah), is a building at the c ...
in
Mecca
Mecca (; officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, commonly shortened to Makkah ()) is a city and administrative center of the Mecca Province of Saudi Arabia, and the Holiest sites in Islam, holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red ...
; the Dar es Salaam bombing was called Operation
al-Aqsa
Aqsa'', ''Aksa, al-Aksa or al-Aqsa ( ar, الأقصى, link=no, translit=al-Aqṣā) usually refer to either:
*al-Aqsa Mosque compound, also known as , a religious site in Jerusalem located on the Temple Mount
*, also known as the Qibli Mosque, ...
in Jerusalem, but "neither had an obvious connection to the American embassies in Africa. Bin Laden initially said that the sites had been targeted because of the 'invasion' of
Somalia
Somalia, , Osmanya script: 𐒈𐒝𐒑𐒛𐒐𐒘𐒕𐒖; ar, الصومال, aṣ-Ṣūmāl officially the Federal Republic of SomaliaThe ''Federal Republic of Somalia'' is the country's name per Article 1 of thProvisional Constituti ...
; then he described an American plan to
partition Sudan, which he said was hatched in the embassy in Nairobi. He also told his followers that the
genocide in Rwanda
The Rwandan genocide occurred between 7 April and 15 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. During this period of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were killed by armed Hutu ...
had been planned inside the two American embassies." Wright concludes that bin Laden's actual goal was "to lure the United States into
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
, which had long been called 'The Graveyard of Empires.'"
In May 1998, a villa in Nairobi was purchased by one of the bombers to enable a bomb to be built in the garage.
Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan purchased a beige
Toyota Dyna
The Toyota Dyna is a light to medium-duty cab over truck for commercial use. In the Japanese market, the Dyna is sold alongside its twin called the Toyoace. The Toyoace was a renaming of the Toyopet SKB Truck as a result of a 1956 public competi ...
truck in Nairobi and a 1987
Nissan Atlas
The Nissan Atlas ( ja, 日産・アトラス) is a series of pickup trucks and light commercial vehicles manufactured by Nissan. It is built by UD Trucks for the Japanese market, and by the Renault-Nissan Alliance for the European market. Th ...
refrigeration truck in Dar es Salaam. Six metal bars were used to form a "cage" on the back of the Atlas to accommodate the bomb.
In June 1998, KK Mohamed rented House 213 in the Illala district of Dar es Salaam, about four miles (6 km) from the U.S. embassy. A white
Suzuki Samurai
is a Japanese multinational corporation headquartered in Minami-ku, Hamamatsu, Japan. Suzuki manufactures automobiles, motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), outboard marine engines, wheelchairs and a variety of other small internal co ...
was used to haul bomb components, hidden in rice sacks, to House 213.
In both Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Mohammed Odeh supervised construction of two very large, destructive devices. The Nairobi bomb was made of 400 to 500 cylinders of TNT (about the size of drink cans), ammonium nitrate, aluminum powder, and detonating cord. The explosives were packed into twenty specially designed wooden crates that were sealed and then placed in the bed of the trucks.
Muhsin Musa Matwalli Atwah ran a wire from the bomb to a set of batteries in the back of the truck cab and then to a detonator switch beneath the dashboard.
The Dar es Salaam bomb was of slightly different construction: the TNT was attached to fifteen
oxygen
Oxygen is the chemical element with the symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group in the periodic table, a highly reactive nonmetal, and an oxidizing agent that readily forms oxides with most elements as wel ...
tanks and gas canisters, and was surrounded with four bags of
ammonium nitrate
Ammonium nitrate is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . It is a white crystalline salt consisting of ions of ammonium and nitrate. It is highly soluble in water and hygroscopic as a solid, although it does not form hydrates. It is ...
fertilizer and some sandbags to tamp and direct the blast.
The bombings were scheduled for August 7, the eighth anniversary of the arrival of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia during the early stages of the
Persian Gulf War
The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a Coalition of the Gulf War, 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Ba'athist Iraq, ...
, likely a choice by
Osama bin Laden.
When bin Laden’s bodyguard asked him after the attacks whether so many victims were really necessary, he replied referring to al-Qaeda’s 1996 and 1998 fatwas declaring war on America and Israel: “We warned the whole world what would happen to the friends of America. We weren’t responsible for any victims from the minute we warned those countries.” In the second half of 1999, Osama bin Laden spoke to a crowd of graduates from a training camp in Afghanistan about the attacks and explained the reasons for targeting the Nairobi embassy. Bin Laden said
Operation Restore Hope
The Unified Task Force (UNITAF) was a United States-led, United Nations-sanctioned multinational force which operated in Somalia from 5 December 1992 until 4 May 1993. A United States initiative (code-named Operation Restore Hope), U ...
in Somalia was directed from the Nairobi embassy and claimed the lives of 30,000 Muslims, the Southern Sudanese rebel leader
John Garang
John Garang de Mabior (June 23, 1945 – July 30, 2005) was a Sudanese politician and revolutionary leader. From 1983 to 2005, he led the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) after the Second Sudanese Civil War, the comprehensive peace agreement ...
was supported from there and it was the largest American Intelligence center in East Africa.
Attacks and casualties
On August 7 between 10:30 a.m. and 10:40 a.m. local time (3:30–3:40 a.m.
EDT), suicide bombers in trucks laden with explosives parked outside the embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, and almost simultaneously detonated. 213 people were killed in the Nairobi blast, while 11 were killed in Dar es Salaam. An estimated 4,000 in Nairobi were wounded, and another 85 in Dar es Salaam. Seismological readings analyzed after the bombs indicated energy of between of high-
explosive material. Although the attacks were directed at U.S. facilities, the vast majority of casualties were local citizens of the two African countries. Twelve Americans were killed, including two
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
employees in the Nairobi embassy, Tom Shah (aka Uttamilal Thomas Shah) and Molly Huckaby Hardy, and one
U.S. Marine
The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines, is the maritime land force service branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for conducting expeditionary and amphibious operations through com ...
, Sergeant Jesse "Nathan" Aliganga, a
Marine Security Guard
A Marine Security Guard (MSG), also known as a Marine Embassy Guard, is a member of the Marine Corps Embassy Security Group (formerly Marine Security Guard Battalion), a brigade-sized organization of the United States Marine Corps (USMC) whose de ...
at the Nairobi embassy.
U.S. Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...
Sergeant Kenneth Ray Hobson II was one of the 12 Americans killed in the attack.
While Azzam drove the Toyota Dyna quickly toward the Nairobi embassy along with
Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al-Owhali,
local security guard Benson Okuku Bwaku was warned to open the gate immediately and fired upon when he refused to comply. Al-Owhali threw a
stun grenade
A stun grenade, also known as a flash grenade, flashbang, thunderflash, or sound bomb, is a less-lethal explosive device used to temporarily disorient an enemy's senses. Upon detonation, they produce a blinding flash of light and an extremely lo ...
at embassy guards before exiting the vehicle and running off.
Osama bin Laden later offered the explanation that it had been Al-Owhali's intention to leap out and shoot the guards to clear a path for the truck, but that he had left his pistol in the truck and subsequently ran off.
As Bwaku radioed to Marine Post One for backup, the truck detonated.
The explosion damaged the embassy building and collapsed the neighboring Ufundi Building where most victims were killed, mainly students and staff of a secretarial college housed there. The heat from the blast was channeled between the buildings towards Haile Selassie Avenue where a packed commuter bus was burned. Windows were shattered in a radius of nearly . A large number of eye injuries occurred because people in buildings nearby who had heard the first explosion of the hand grenade and the shooting went to their office windows to have a look when the main blast occurred and shattered the windows.
Meanwhile, the Atlas truck that attacked the US Embassy at 36 Laibon Road, Dar es Salaam was being driven by
Hamden Khalif Allah Awad, known as "Ahmed the German" due to his blond hair, a former camp trainer who had arrived in the country only a few days earlier.
The death toll was less than in Nairobi as the U.S. embassy was located outside the city center in the upscale Oysterbay neighborhood, and a water truck prevented the suicide bombers from getting closer to the structure.
Following the attacks, a group calling itself the "Liberation Army for Holy Sites" took credit for the bombings. U.S. investigators believe the term was a cover used by
Egyptian Islamic Jihad
The Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ, ar, الجهاد الإسلامي المصري), formerly called simply Islamic Jihad ( ar, الجهاد الإسلامي, links=no) and the Liberation Army for Holy Sites, originally referred to as al-Jihad, and ...
, who had actually perpetrated the bombing.
Aftermath and international response
In response to the bombings, President
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...
ordered
Operation Infinite Reach
Operation Infinite Reach was the codename for American cruise missile strikes on Al-Qaeda bases in Khost Province, Afghanistan, and the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, Sudan, on August 20, 1998. The attacks, launched by the U.S. ...
, a series of
cruise missile
A cruise missile is a guided missile used against terrestrial or naval targets that remains in the atmosphere and flies the major portion of its flight path at approximately constant speed. Cruise missiles are designed to deliver a large warhe ...
strikes on targets in
Sudan
Sudan ( or ; ar, السودان, as-Sūdān, officially the Republic of the Sudan ( ar, جمهورية السودان, link=no, Jumhūriyyat as-Sūdān), is a country in Northeast Africa. It shares borders with the Central African Republic t ...
and
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
on August 20, 1998, announcing the planned strike in a prime-time address on U.S. television.
The
United Nations Security Council
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is one of the Organs of the United Nations, six principal organs of the United Nations (UN) and is charged with ensuring international security, international peace and security, recommending the admi ...
passed
Resolution 1189 condemning the attacks on the embassies.
Both embassies were heavily damaged and the Nairobi embassy had to be rebuilt. It is now located across the road from the
United Nations Office at Nairobi
United Nations Office at Nairobi (UNON, sw, Ofisi ya Umoja wa Mataifa Nairobi) in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, is one of four major United Nations office sites where numerous different UN agencies have a joint presence. Established in 1996, ...
for security purposes.
A memorial park was constructed on the former embassy site, dedicated on the third anniversary of the attack.
[ ] Public protest marred the opening ceremony after it was announced that the park, including its wall inscribed with the names of the dead, would not be free to the public.
Within months following the bombings, the
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other n ...
Bureau of Diplomatic Security
The Bureau of Diplomatic Security, commonly known as Diplomatic Security (DS), is the security branch of the United States Department of State. It conducts international investigations, threat analysis, cyber security, counterterrorism, and p ...
added Kenya to its Antiterrorism Assistance Program (ATA), which was originally created in 1983. While the addition was largely a formality to reaffirm U.S. commitment to fighting terrorism in Kenya, it nonetheless sparked the beginning of an active bilateral antiterrorism campaign between the United States and Kenya. The U.S. government also rapidly and permanently increased the monetary aid to Kenya. Immediate changes included a $42 million grant targeted specifically towards Kenyan victims.
''Opati v. Republic of Sudan''
In 2001, lead plaintiff James Owens and others filed a civil lawsuit against
Sudan
Sudan ( or ; ar, السودان, as-Sūdān, officially the Republic of the Sudan ( ar, جمهورية السودان, link=no, Jumhūriyyat as-Sūdān), is a country in Northeast Africa. It shares borders with the Central African Republic t ...
for its role in the attack under the
Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act
The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA) is a United States law, codified at Title 28, §§ 1330, 1332, 1391(f), 1441(d), and 1602–1611 of the United States Code, that established criteria as to whether a foreign sovereign nation ( ...
with the recently-added 1996 amendments for
state-sponsored terrorism
State-sponsored terrorism is terrorist violence carried out with the active support of national governments provided to violent non-state actors. States can sponsor terrorist groups in several ways, including but not limited to funding terroris ...
.
[ They argued that Sudan was at fault for providing sanctuary to the bombers prior to the attack. The lawsuit was prolonged over a decade, hampered in part by the lack of Sudan sending counsel at times, but further struggled when the legal system ruled that foreign nations had sovereign immunity from ]causes of action
A cause of action or right of action, in law, is a set of facts sufficient to justify suing to obtain money or property, or to justify the enforcement of a legal right against another party. The term also refers to the legal theory upon which a p ...
in civil lawsuits based on the current language of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act in a 2004 case. Congress amended the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act in 2008 to correct this and to allow its provisions to retroactively apply to existing lawsuits, including Owens' case. With that, hundreds more plaintiffs joined the suit, eventually with more than 700 parties listed. By 2014, the district court awarded the plaintiffs over $10 billion.[ Sudan, which had not appeared during the initial lawsuit, appealed the judgment, arguing it did not understand the US civil suit system and did not understand the consequences of not appearing, but also challenged the retroactive nature of the 2008 change to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.][ The appeals court discounted Sudan's argument regarding its lack of understanding, and upheld the lower court's finding that Sudan was liable for the bombings, but ruled that the $4.3 billion of punitive damages could not be applied retroactively. The plaintiffs petitioned to the Supreme Court to appeal, and in May 2020, the Court ruled in ''Opati v. Republic of Sudan'' that the punitive damages could be retroactively applied, restoring the $4.3 billion that had been awarded at the District Court.
In October 2020, President ]Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pe ...
announced that the United States would remove Sudan from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list, after they had agreed to pay $335million in compensation to the families of victims of the embassy bombings.
Indictment
Following the investigation, an indictment was issued. It charges the following 21 people for various alleged roles in the bombings. 20 of the cases have been resolved.
See also
* List of terrorist incidents in 1998
This is a timeline of incidents in 1998 that have been labelled as "terrorism" and are not believed to have been carried out by a government or its forces (see state terrorism and state-sponsored terrorism).
Guidelines
* To be included, entries ...
* List of Islamist terrorist attacks
The following is a list of Islamist terrorist attacks.
1940s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2001-2010 2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011-2020 2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
...
* Terrorism in Kenya
Many terrorist attacks have occurred in Kenya during the 20th and 21st centuries. In 1980, the Jewish-owned Norfolk hotel was attacked by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). In 1998, the US embassy was bombed in Nairobi, as was the Isr ...
* 1998 World Cup terror plot
From March to May 1998, a terror plot against the 1998 FIFA World Cup in France was uncovered by European law enforcement agencies. More than 100 people were arrested in seven countries as a result of the plot. Organised by the Algerian Armed Is ...
References
External links
Rewards for Justice – Most Wanted Terrorists
Transcripts of Sentencing Phase of Embassy Bombers Trial
Primer on the attacks
*[http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mfdip:@field(DOCID+mfdip2010bus02) Oral History with Ambassador Prudence Bushnell to the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training on the embassy bombings]
{{DEFAULTSORT:United States embassy bombings, 1998
1998 United States embassy bombings, *
1998 crimes in Kenya
1998 crimes in Tanzania
1998 in international relations
1998 in the United States, Embassy bombings
1998 murders in Africa
1998 murders in Kenya
1990s murders in Tanzania
Al-Qaeda attacks
Attacks on diplomatic missions in Kenya
Attacks on diplomatic missions in Tanzania
1998
August 1998 crimes
Car and truck bombings in Kenya
Explosions in 1998
Explosions in Nairobi
History of Dar es Salaam
1998
Islamic terrorism in Kenya
Islamic terrorist incidents in 1998
Embassy bombings
Mass murder in 1998
Mass murder in Nairobi
Presidency of Bill Clinton
1998
Terrorist incidents in Africa in 1998
Terrorist incidents in Kenya in the 1990s
Terrorist incidents in Nairobi
1998
1990s in Nairobi
20th-century mass murder in Africa
Building bombings in Africa