thedrifter
10-23-02, 07:53 AM
http://www.beirut-memorial.org/graphics/mainpieces/bmol_main.jpg
Beirut Death Toll at 161 Americans; French Casualties Rise in Bombings; Reagan Insists Marines Will Remain
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BUILDINGS BLASTED
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Truck Loaded With TNT Wrecks Headquarters of a Marine Unit
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By Thomas L. Friedman
Special to The New York Times
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Oct. 23 -- A suicide terrorist driving a truck loaded with TNT blew up an American Marine headquarters at the Beirut airport today, killing at least 161 marines and sailors and wounding 75.
In an almost simultaneous attack, another bomb- laden truck slammed into a French paratroop barracks two miles away.
According to Lebanese Civil Defense authorities, at least 27 French paratroopers were killed, 12 were wounded and 53 were reported missing and believed buried in rubble. Official Defense Ministry figures issued in Paris listed 12 French soldiers dead, 13 wounded and 48 missing.
It was the highest number of American military personnel killed in a single attack since the Vietnam War. The identity of the attackers still had not been determined tonight.
Truck Loaded With TNT
According to a Pentagon spokesman, a Mercedes truck filled with some 2,500 pounds of TNT broke through a series of steel fences and sandbag barricades and detonated in the heart of the Marines' administrative headquarters building shortly after dawn. The explosion collapsed all four floors of the building, turning it into a burning mound of broken cement pillars and cinder blocks.
Although a marine sentry was able to fire about five shots at the suicide driver and another marine threw himself in front of the speeding, explosive- filled truck, neither could block its entry into the headquarters building, where it exploded in a fireball that left a crater 30 feet deep and 40 feet wide.
In a haunting scene late tonight, rescue workers using blow torches, pneumatic drills and cranes worked furiously under floodlights to pry out the dead and wounded still crushed beneath the smouldering debris. Marine spokesmen said there might have been as many as 300 men sleeping in the building - which doubled as a bunk house - at the time of the blast.
'Carnage' Like That in Vietnam
''I haven't seen carnage like that since Vietnam,'' the Marine spokesman, Maj. Robert Jordan, said shortly after emerging from the rescue operation with his forearms smeared with blood.
Today's blast brought to 170 the number of Americans killed in Lebanon since the bombing of the American Embassy here in April.
Rescue workers were hindered in their movements by unidentified snipers who intermittently fired shots into the Marine compound from the nearby southern suburbs of Beirut. The marines occasionally returned the fire.
Less that two minutes after the attack on the Marine compound, a truck laden with explosives slammed into a building used by the French as a headquarters for one of their 110-man companies in the southern Beirut suburb of Jnah, two miles north of the Marine headquarters. The explosion brought all eight floors down in a heap, like a fallen house of cards.
(A caller to the Beirut office of Agence France Presse said a group calling itself the Free Islamic Revolution Movement took responsibility, United Press International reported. The caller was quoted as saying that two youths carried out the attacks)
The two suicide missions were almost identical to the assault on the American Embassy here on April 18, when a pickup truck slammed into the front lobby and exploded, killing 63 people including 17 Americans. A collection of previously unknown pro-Iranian and pro-Palestinian organizations said they had been responsible for the embassy bombing, but the real identity of the attackers has still not been determined.
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/991023onthisday_big.html
Sempers,
Roger
Beirut Death Toll at 161 Americans; French Casualties Rise in Bombings; Reagan Insists Marines Will Remain
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BUILDINGS BLASTED
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Truck Loaded With TNT Wrecks Headquarters of a Marine Unit
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Thomas L. Friedman
Special to The New York Times
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Oct. 23 -- A suicide terrorist driving a truck loaded with TNT blew up an American Marine headquarters at the Beirut airport today, killing at least 161 marines and sailors and wounding 75.
In an almost simultaneous attack, another bomb- laden truck slammed into a French paratroop barracks two miles away.
According to Lebanese Civil Defense authorities, at least 27 French paratroopers were killed, 12 were wounded and 53 were reported missing and believed buried in rubble. Official Defense Ministry figures issued in Paris listed 12 French soldiers dead, 13 wounded and 48 missing.
It was the highest number of American military personnel killed in a single attack since the Vietnam War. The identity of the attackers still had not been determined tonight.
Truck Loaded With TNT
According to a Pentagon spokesman, a Mercedes truck filled with some 2,500 pounds of TNT broke through a series of steel fences and sandbag barricades and detonated in the heart of the Marines' administrative headquarters building shortly after dawn. The explosion collapsed all four floors of the building, turning it into a burning mound of broken cement pillars and cinder blocks.
Although a marine sentry was able to fire about five shots at the suicide driver and another marine threw himself in front of the speeding, explosive- filled truck, neither could block its entry into the headquarters building, where it exploded in a fireball that left a crater 30 feet deep and 40 feet wide.
In a haunting scene late tonight, rescue workers using blow torches, pneumatic drills and cranes worked furiously under floodlights to pry out the dead and wounded still crushed beneath the smouldering debris. Marine spokesmen said there might have been as many as 300 men sleeping in the building - which doubled as a bunk house - at the time of the blast.
'Carnage' Like That in Vietnam
''I haven't seen carnage like that since Vietnam,'' the Marine spokesman, Maj. Robert Jordan, said shortly after emerging from the rescue operation with his forearms smeared with blood.
Today's blast brought to 170 the number of Americans killed in Lebanon since the bombing of the American Embassy here in April.
Rescue workers were hindered in their movements by unidentified snipers who intermittently fired shots into the Marine compound from the nearby southern suburbs of Beirut. The marines occasionally returned the fire.
Less that two minutes after the attack on the Marine compound, a truck laden with explosives slammed into a building used by the French as a headquarters for one of their 110-man companies in the southern Beirut suburb of Jnah, two miles north of the Marine headquarters. The explosion brought all eight floors down in a heap, like a fallen house of cards.
(A caller to the Beirut office of Agence France Presse said a group calling itself the Free Islamic Revolution Movement took responsibility, United Press International reported. The caller was quoted as saying that two youths carried out the attacks)
The two suicide missions were almost identical to the assault on the American Embassy here on April 18, when a pickup truck slammed into the front lobby and exploded, killing 63 people including 17 Americans. A collection of previously unknown pro-Iranian and pro-Palestinian organizations said they had been responsible for the embassy bombing, but the real identity of the attackers has still not been determined.
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/991023onthisday_big.html
Sempers,
Roger