Video: 'Flashback - 1983 US Embassy Bombing'
(Monday, April 18, 1983, 1:03 p.m. Eastern European Time; during the 1983 United States embassy bombing in Beirut, part of the Lebanese Civil War) — 63 people, including 17 Americans, were killed today at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, by a suicide bomber.
The victims were mostly embassy and CIA staff members, but also included several U.S. soldiers and one U.S. Marine Security Guard.
It was the deadliest attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission up to that time, and was considered the beginning of Islamist attacks on U.S. targets.
The attack came in the wake of an intervention in the Lebanese Civil War by the United States and other Western countries, which sought to restore order and central government authority.
A pro-Iranian group calling itself the Islamic Jihad Organization took responsibility for the bombing in a telephone call to a news office immediately after the blast.
Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. on May 30, 2003, determined that the bombing was carried out by the militant group Hezbollah with the approval and financing of senior Iranian officials, paving the way for the victims to seek damages.
