Never Forget – Beirut: October 23 1983

Beirut October 23, 1983: Truck Loaded With TNT Wrecks Headquarters of a Marine Unit

By Thomas L. Friedman The New York Times October 23, 1983

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.

Read more at The New York Times