REMEMBER OUR FALLEN MARINES AND SAILORS OF BEIRUT, LEBANON In the early morning of October 23, 1983, the First Battalion, 8th Marines Headquarters building was destroyed by a non-Lebanese, terrorist-driven truck, laden with compressed gas-enhanced explosives. This truck, like many others, had become a familiar sight at the airport and so did not raise any alarm on this morning. The a suicide bomber steered a truck loaded with the equivalent of six tons of TNT down the airport road in Beirut, Lebanon. He plowed into the four-story barracks where more than 300 U.S. troops from a U.N. peacekeeping mission slept and detonated what the FBI called the largest non-nuclear bomb in history. The explosion and fireball pulverized the concrete fortress, killing 241 U.S. service members, most of them Marines. A second blast minutes later at the compound of the French peacekeeping force killed 58 more Western Journalism troops. Three months later, President Ronald Reagan pulled the Americans out of Beirut.
Posted on: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 19:03:11 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015