Home > 1998 U.S. embassy bombings
On August 7, 1998, the United States embassies in the East African capital cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, were severely damaged in nearly simultaneous truck bomb attacks. The bombings killed 213 people in Nairobi and a dozen in Dar es Salaam. An estimated 4000 were injured in the Kenyan capital and 85 in Dar es Salaam. Almost all of the victims were African civilians, as well as several US diplomats. The attacks were linked to local members of the al Qaeda terrorist network, headed by Osama bin Laden. It was this terrorist incident that first brought bin Laden and al Qaeda to international notoriety, and led to the FBI's placing him on the agency's Ten Most Wanted List.
While the attacks were aimed at American embassies, the vast majority of the victims were Africans: 32 Kenyans and twelve Americans were killed (in Nairobi) and eight Tanzanian Embassy employees were killed. The remainder of the dead were visitors, passers-by, or people in neighboring buildings: the Nairobi embassy lay in a busy downtown location, while the embassy in Dar es Salaam was further from the city center.
In response to these bombings, on August 20 1998, U.S. President ClintonWilliam Jefferson Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III on August 19, 1946) is a U. politician who served two terms as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. A moderate Democrat who was elected Governor of Arkansas five times, Cli ordered cruise missileA cruise missile is a guided missile which uses a lifting wing and most often a jet propulsion system to allow sustained flight. Cruise missiles are, in essence, unmanned aircraft. They are generally designed to carry a large conventional or nuclear warhe strikes on targets in SudanAs distinct from the African region of the same name (usually shortened to the Sudan the Republic of the Sudan (or just Sudan is the largest country in Africa, situated in the northeast part of the continent. The capital is Khartoum. It borders Egypt to t and AfghanistanAfghanistan ( Dari/ Pashtu: Afgnistn is a country in Central Asia. It is bordered by Iran in the west, Pakistan in the south and east, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in the north, and China in the easternmost part of the country. It is among the (see Operation Infinite ReachOperation Infinite Reach was a US cruise missile strike on terrorist bases in Afghanistan and Sudan on August 20, 1998. The attack was in retaliation for the bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people (including 12 Americans)).
Investigations into the embassy bombings were conducted by the FBI and Kenyan and Tanzanian authorities. A list of suspects was drawn up and several men were charged with complicity in the bombings. In an event that angered many involved in the investigation, a court in TalibanThe Taliban ( Pashtun: "students of Islam"), also transliterated as Taleban is an Islamist movement which ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001, despite having diplomatic recognition from only three countries (the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan,-controlled Afghanistan declared on November 20 1998 that Osama bin Laden was a "a man without a sin" in regard to the bombing.
1 Conspirators still at large
