19961776 Club
A sewage tanker packed with 5,000 pounds of explosives kills 19 U.S. airmen at Khobar Towers
The blast at 10:20 p.m. tears an 85-foot crater beside Building 131; 498 people of many nationalities are wounded, and the hole is already filling with seawater from the Gulf.
Seven months after a car bombing in Riyadh had already put American forces in Saudi Arabia on their highest alert, the warning bells were still ringing at Khobar Towers — and still being missed. On the night of June 25, 1996, attackers parked a converted sewage tanker packed with roughly 5,000 pounds of plastic explosives in a lot adjacent to Building #131, housing members of the U.S. Air Force's 4404th Wing (Provisional), and fled. The bomb detonated at approximately 10:20 p.m., killing 19 U.S. Air Force personnel, wounding 498 people of many nationalities, and leaving a crater 85 feet wide and 35 feet deep that soon began filling with seawater from the Persian Gulf…
