Word: ite
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Every so often, sniper fire from the neighboring Shi'ite Muslim slums would ring out, sending the searchers scurrying for shelter. Then, two days after the blast, came terrifying news. A rumor spread that three vehicles reportedly laden with high explosives were cruising the neighborhood. The Marines were immediately placed on "Condition One," the highest state of alert. Huge amphibious personnel carriers blocked off the roads leading to the base, while the highway curving past the airport was barricaded with boulders of concrete. Several hours later, without explanation, the alert was downgraded...
...Syrians knew the structure and layouts of the Marine and French headquarters that were destroyed because they had previously occupied both buildings. The Syrians, in addition, control the region of eastern Lebanon where the Shi'ite fanatics are based. Recalling that the truck that destroyed the U.S. Marine headquarters carried some 2,000 Ibs. of high explosives, former director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Richard Helms notes, "You can't go down to the corner drugstore and buy a ton of TNT. Syrian assistance was probably a factor...
...latest bombings were all too reminiscent of the destruction of the U.S. embassy in West Beirut last April that killed 63 people, including 17 Americans. One of the groups claiming responsibility for that action was the Islamic Jihad Organization, an obscure pro-Iranian group made up of Shi'ite Muslims loyal to Iran's Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. On Sunday evening the State Department received an unconfirmed report that a faction calling itself the Islamic Revolutionary Movement had taken responsibility for the terrorist attacks. An unidentified caller had apparently phoned the Beirut office of the French news service Agence France-Presse...
Weinberger said that there was "a lot of circumstantial evidence, and a lot of it points to Iran." Sunday's twin attacks against the U.S. and French forces were, just like the U.S. embassy bombing, carefully coordinated kamikaze missions. But the strongest indication that an Iran-backed radical Shi'ite group was involved derived from the fact that the French contingent was struck at the same time as the Marines. In recent months France has become one of Khomeini's most hated countries, partly because it granted asylum to former Iranian President Bani Sadr and other Iranian dissidents, and partly...
...Hizbolla, which means Party of God, is a rival to the Amal faction, the largest Shi'ite group in Lebanon. It receives guns, ammunition and money from the Iranian revolutionary guards operating in the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley and from the Iranian embassy in Beirut, which sees it as a vehicle for extending Khomeini's influence in Lebanon. The Hizbolla is widely assumed to have been behind the U.S. embassy bombing, but neither Lebanese nor U.S. authorities have been able to pin this down. A measure of the difficulty of identifying terrorists in Lebanon is that although two or three...