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For Americans Scarred by Beirut Bombings, a Measure of Delayed Justice

(Washington Post) Rory Laverty - Israel announced on Friday that Ibrahim Aqil, a Hizbullah commander, was among those killed in an Israeli airstrike. U.S. officials said he was a principal member of a terrorist cell that carried out the bombing on the Marine barracks in Beirut on Oct. 23, 1983, killing 241 U.S. service members and 58 French troops; the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut that April that killed 63 people; and the kidnapping of German and American hostages in Lebanon. "Everybody suffered these tremendous tragedies that blew their lives apart," said Catherine Votaw, whose father Albert, 57, a housing officer with the U.S. Agency for International Development, was killed in the embassy bombing. "My only question is...How did he get to live 41 years longer than my dad?" Hizbullah was also involved in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy annex in Beirut in 1984 that killed 23 people, the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in 1985, and the Khobar Towers attack in Saudi Arabia in 1996 that killed 19 U.S. airmen. "We've been engaged with Hizbullah for a very long time," said retired Amb. Ryan Crocker, who survived the April 1983 embassy bombing while stationed there. Of Aqil, he said, "It is still a source of some satisfaction that he finally got it."
2024-09-22 00:00:00
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