1998 United States Embassy Bombings - Attacks and Casualties

Attacks and Casualties

On August 7, between 10:30 am and 10:40 am local time (3:30–3:40 am Washington time), suicide bombers in trucks laden with explosives parked outside the embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, and almost simultaneously detonated. In Nairobi, approximately 212 people were killed, and an estimated 4,000 wounded; in Dar es Salaam, the attack killed at least 11 and wounded 85. Seismological readings analyzed after the bombs indicated energy of between 3–17 tons of high explosive material. Although the attacks were directed at American facilities, the vast majority of casualties were local citizens; 12 Americans were killed, including two Central Intelligence Agency employees in the Nairobi embassy, Tom Shah and Molly Huckaby Hardy, and one Marine, Sergeant Jesse Aliganga, a Marine Security Guard at the Nairobi embassy.

While driver Azzam drove the Mitsubishi Canter quickly toward the Nairobi embassy along with Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al-Owhali, local security guard Benson Okuku Bwaku was warned to open the gate immediately – and fired upon when he refused to comply. Al-Owhali threw a stun grenade at embassy guards before exiting the vehicle and running off. Osama bin Laden later offered the explanation that it had been Al-Owhali's intention to leap out and shoot the guards to clear a path for the truck, but that he had left his pistol in the truck and subsequently ran off. As Bwaku radioed to Marine Post One for backup, the truck detonated.

The explosion damaged the embassy building and flattened the neighbouring Ufundi Building where most victims were killed, mainly students and staff of a secretarial college housed here. The heat from the blast was channelled between the buildings towards Haile Selassie Avenue where a packed commuter bus was burned. Windows were shattered in a radius of nearly one kilometer. A large number of eye injuries occurred because people in buildings nearby who had heard the first explosion of the hand grenade and the shooting went to their office windows to have a look when the main blast occurred and shattered the windows.

Meanwhile, the Atlas truck in Dar es Salaam was being driven by Hamden Khalif Allah Awad, known as "Ahmed the German" due to his blonde hair, a former camp trainer who had arrived in the country only a few days earlier. The death toll was less than in Nairobi as the U.S. embassy was located outside the city center on Bagamoyo Road on a large plot with no immediate neighbours close to the gate where the explosion occurred.

Following the attacks, a group calling itself the "Liberation Army for Holy Sites" took credit for the bombings. American investigators believe the term was a cover used by Egyptian Islamic Jihad, who had actually perpetrated the bombing.