On 7 August 1998, coordinated truck bombs exploded outside the United States embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
The nearly simultaneous attacks killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and wounded more than 4,500. The overwhelming majority of those killed and injured were African civilians, embassy employees and people working or travelling nearby.
The bombings were soon directly linked to al-Qaeda and became one of the clearest early warnings of the organisation’s ability to plan mass-casualty attacks across international borders.
Nearly simultaneous truck bombs
At approximately 10.30am local time, suicide bombers drove vehicles packed with explosives towards the two American diplomatic compounds.
The Nairobi embassy stood in a busy city-centre district. The explosion devastated the embassy and surrounding buildings, including the neighbouring Ufundi Cooperative House, while windows shattered across a wide area. People in offices, on streets and aboard nearby vehicles were caught in the blast and falling debris.
More than 200 people were killed in Nairobi and thousands were injured. The scale of the destruction quickly overwhelmed local emergency services as residents, police officers, medical workers and volunteers searched through wreckage and carried casualties to hospitals.
In Dar es Salaam, another truck bomb exploded outside the US embassy within minutes of the Nairobi attack. Eleven people were killed and scores more were wounded. The compound’s less congested location limited the wider destruction, but the embassy sustained extensive damage.
Victims from several countries
Although the embassies were American targets, the human cost fell principally upon the people of Kenya and Tanzania.
Those killed included local embassy staff, workers in neighbouring buildings, pedestrians, motorists and people conducting ordinary business in the centres of the two cities. Twelve American citizens were among the dead.
Memorials at the sites have continued to honour the victims and the courage of those who responded. The former Nairobi embassy site later became the August 7th Memorial Park.
An enormous international investigation
The United States launched what became the largest overseas deployment in the FBI’s history at that time. More than 900 FBI agents, alongside other employees and international partners, travelled abroad to recover evidence, identify victims and trace those responsible.
Investigators connected the bombings to al-Qaeda, the terrorist organisation led by Osama bin Laden. In November 1998, the United States indicted bin Laden and other alleged members of the network in connection with the attacks and a broader conspiracy against American targets.
Several suspects were subsequently arrested, extradited and prosecuted. In 2010, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was convicted in a United States federal court of conspiring to destroy the embassies, causing death. He was later sentenced to life imprisonment.
The American response
On 20 August 1998, President Bill Clinton ordered cruise-missile strikes against sites in Afghanistan and Sudan in retaliation for the embassy bombings.
The United States targeted al-Qaeda training facilities in Afghanistan and the al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, which the Clinton administration alleged was connected to chemical-weapons activity. The Sudan strike became deeply controversial, with the evidence underpinning the allegation strongly disputed.
Bin Laden was not killed, and al-Qaeda retained its sanctuary and operational infrastructure in Afghanistan.
A warning before 9/11
The bombings established al-Qaeda as a potent international adversary of the United States. They demonstrated its ability to coordinate suicide attacks, move explosives and personnel across borders and strike heavily symbolic targets at almost the same moment.
Two years later, al-Qaeda attacked the USS Cole in Yemen. On 11 September 2001, the organisation carried out the attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania that killed almost 3,000 people.
The 9/11 Commission later described the East Africa bombings as a watershed in the attention given to bin Laden’s network. However, the measures taken after August 1998 did not remove al-Qaeda’s Afghan sanctuary or prevent its preparations for further attacks.
Remembering 7 August
The embassy bombings are often discussed as part of the history leading towards 9/11, but they were first and foremost devastating attacks upon Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.
For survivors and the families of the 224 people killed, 7 August remains a day of personal loss. Annual commemorations in Kenya, Tanzania and the United States remember the victims, the injured and those who entered unstable buildings and burning streets to help strangers.