A federal judge ruled yesterday that the government of Iran sponsored the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and awarded $123 million to 29 American victims and family members of some of those killed in the attack. U.S. District Judge John D. Bates concluded that Iran was ultimately responsible for the radical Islamic group Hezbollah detonating a car loaded with explosives inside the embassy entrance on April 18, 1983. It was the first large-scale attack on an American embassy anywhere in the world and was considered a watershed act that ushered in two decades of terrorist attacks on U.S. targets overseas and at home. The explosion killed 63 people, 17 of them Americans, injured another 100, and flattened seven embassy floors. It was followed — and overshadowed — by the Oct. 23, 1983, terrorist bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 servicemen and led then-President Ronald Reagan to withdraw U.S. troops from Lebanon. Full Story
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