Al-Khobar, Attack on U.S. Troops at (1996)

Terrorist attack in which a tanker truck bomb exploded in front of the Khobar Towers, a Saudi Arabian complex in Dhahran that housed U.S. and allied forces supporting the coalition air operation over Iraq. The explosion killed 19 Americans and wounded 372.

The Khobar Tower, an eight-story building used to house U.S. Air Force personnel from the 4404th Fighter Wing, was part of the Al-Khobar housing complex built by the Saudis in 1979 near the city of Dhahran in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia. During the Gulf War of 1990–91, coalition forces moved into the complex, including service members from the United States, Saudi Arabia, France, and the United Kingdom.

At about 10:00 p.m. on June 25, 1996, a car entered the parking lot outside the northern perimeter of the Al-Khobar residential complex, some 80 feet from Building 131, where Americans were housed. A bomb-laden tanker truck and another car followed shortly after. The men parked the tanker truck, loaded with at least 5,000 pounds of plastic explosives, and left in the third vehicle.

Sergeant Alfred R. Guerrero of the U.S. Air Force Security Police was stationed on the roof of Building 131. He alerted security to the presence of suspicious vehicles and began evacuating the building, probably saving dozens of lives—many of the evacuees were in the stairwell at the back of the building when the bomb went off. Another factor that minimized damages was the security fence of poured concrete barriers, which deflected the blast from the lower floors of the building, preventing its collapse.

The bomb, twice as powerful as the bomb used to destroy U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, destroyed or damaged six high-rise buildings in the complex, shattered windows in every other building in the compound, and left a crater 85 feet wide and 35 feet deep. The blast was even felt in the state of Bahrain, some 20 miles away.

On June 28, 1996, U.S. Secretary of Defense Les Aspin appointed retired general Wayne Downing, the former commander in chief of the U.S. Special Operations Command, to conduct an assessment of the facts surrounding the Khobar Tower bombing. A few days later, on July 2, Louis Freeh, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), traveled to Dhahran to meet with senior Saudi officials. The Saudis welcomed the investigation, although they initially denied access to evidence and witnesses, fearful of a possible U.S. retaliation against Iran, which was suspected of aiding the bombers.

The FBI eventually was granted access to witnesses and those whom the Saudis had arrested. Nearly five years after the bombing, on June 21, 2001, an indictment issued in the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, brought terrorism charges against 14 individuals. They included 13 members of the pro-Iranian Saudi Hezbollah and an unidentified 14th person linked to the Lebanese Hezbollah, an Islamic and terrorist organization that received financial support from Iran.

According to the indictment, the attack aimed to expel Americans from Saudi Arabia. The indictment also traced the attack to 1993, when Ahmed Al-Mughassil was head of the military wing of the Saudi Hezbollah. In 1995, Al-Mughassil ordered members of the Saudi Hezbollah to begin surveillance of Americans in Saudi Arabia. This operation produced reports that were also provided to officials in Iran. By late fall of 1995, Al-Mughassil had decided that Hezbollah should attack the site in Dhahran.

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