Section A · Page 6
The University Daily Kansan
Friday, August 21, 1998
U.S. retaliates after explosions in Africa
Continued from page 1A
roristattacks.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said that yesterday's air strikes were part of an ongoing fight against terrorism and that Americans should not think it would be won easily.
The U.S. strikes involved Tomahawk cruise missiles fired by Navy ships in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, said administration and congressional officials. Between 75 and 100 cruise missiles were fired. No aircraft were involved and there were no U.S. casualties, said defense officials.
Acting on intelligence information that Clinton said pinpointed one of the most active terrorist bases in the world and an industrial plant that made agents for chemical weapons, Clinton said he ordered the attacks not only in response to the Aug. 7 bombings of two American embassies but also to preempt more planned terrorist attacks on Americans.
He ordered the strikes based on the unanimous recommendation of his national security team.
"The countries that persistently host terrorism have no right to be safe havens," said Clinton, who interrupted a Martha's Vineyard vacation in Massachusetts to rush back to Washington. "No religion condones the murder of innocent men, women and children."
Clinton did not say whether the mission had succeeded.
Defense Secretary William Cohen said he had no information about bin Laden's whereabouts and said the purpose of the attack was not to kill him.
The nation's top intelligence officials have warned that the prospect of retaliation against Americans is very high, said a senior intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The attacks were carried out beginning at 1:30 p.m. EDT and took less than an hour, Cohen said.
Cohen said U.S. forces alone were involved in the attacks on what he called a terrorist training and support compound in Afghanistan, 94 miles south of Kabul near the Pakistani border, and on the Shifa Pharmaceutical Plant in Khartoum, suspected of making agents for chemical weapons.
Lawmakers from both parties rallied behind Clinton's decision. House
Rep. Ike Skelton, ranking Democrat on the House National Security Committee, said, "We're quite sure the attacks in Africa came from these two places, and we had to strike back."
Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., called it the right thing to do.
In a confluence of dramatic moments, Clinton announced the U.S. bombings on the same day that former White House intern Monica Lewinsky testified for a second time to the grand jury investigating her relationship with Clinton.
In Washington, Sen. Arlen Specter, RPa., suggested that Clinton may have acted precipitously in an attempt to focus attention away from his own personal problems.
Asked about that possibility, Cohen said, "The only motivation driving this action today was our absolute obligation to protect the American people from terrorist activities."
A senior U.S. intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Sudanese target, the Shifa Pharmaceutical plant, was used to make precursor chemicals for the deadly nerve gas VX. The official said there was no evidence that the plant actually made commercial pharmaceuticals.
The sites in eastern Afghanistan are all part of what the intelligence official called the largest and most extensive Sunni Muslim terrorist university in the world.
The timing of the strikes — 7:30 p.m. in Sudan and 10 p.m. in Afghanistan — was chosen for three key reasons, the official said: The United States had information pointing to impending terrorist attacks coordinated by bin Laden's organization; there would be a reduced risk of civilian casualties in Khartoum at that time of night; and U.S. intelligence was informed there would be more terrorists at the training camp in Afghanistan than usual. The training camp, spread over six sites, was said to include as many as 600 terrorists and trainers.
In Khartoum, Interior Minister Abdul Rahim Mohammed Hussein said two American planes dropped about five bombs in three or four attacks on a privately owned factory in an industrial part of the capital.
"It is not chemical weapons. It is a factory for medical drugs," he said.
Survivors mourn after embassy bombings
The Associated Press
NAIROBI, Kenya—The FBI chief toured the wreckage of the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania yesterday, just hours before President Clinton ordered strikes against suspected terrorist camp sites in Sudan and Afghanistan that he linked to the embassy bombings.
Kenyans, meanwhile, prayed at a memorial service to heal the scars inflicted by terrorists who killed 257 people in twin attacks Aug. 7 on U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. More than 5,500 people were injured, mostly Kenyans.
Cunton and defense officials said the facilities attacked yesterday by the United States had ties to Osama bin Laden, a Saudi millionaire whom U.S. officials call a major sponsor of terrorism.
An Egyptian Islamic militant linked to bin Laden has been identified by one suspect as having planned the Aug. 7 bombings, a senior Pakistani official said yesterday on condition of anonymity.
Saleh was in charged of bin Laden's terrorist group in Africa, the Pakistani source said. The Saudi millionaire has called on Muslims to attack American installations.
Odeh also said the main conspirators left before the explosions, leaving behind hired Kenyans and Tanzanians to carry out the car bombings, the source said.
Police in Cairo said Saleh's name was not known to them.
Kenyan and Tanzanian police could not confirm the reports.
A reporter in Pakistan, Rahimulah Yusufzai, said he received a call from a spokesman for bin Laden yesterday night.
"I have nothing to do with the bombing of American embassies in Africa, but I urge the Muslims all over the world to continue their jihad against the Americans and Jews," Representative Ayman Al-Zawahiri told Journalist Rahimulah Yusufai on behalf of bin Laden.
The call came before the American strikes against bin Laden's strongholds in Sudan and Afghanistan.
FBI Director Louis Freeh met with FBI agents and local officials in Dar es Salaam yesterday before traveling to Nairobi. He said no conclusions have been made about the suspects being held.
Kenyan police said last week they were holding about five people in their investigation.
In Nairobi, thousands wearing red
ribbons as a sign of mourning gathered yesterday on a grassy hill in downtown Uhuru Park to seek peace and healing from the attacks.
"It is the day that Satan visited Nairobi," President Daniel arap Moi said during the service.
Moi pledged to work closely with U.S. officials to track down the terrorists. "The government will not allow Kenyans to be victims of these inhumane criminals," he said, adding that a memorial should be built near the bombing site.
died were read in batches of six,
punctuated by murmurs of "Lord
have mercy" from mourners
beneath a steel-gray sky. A trumpet
solist played "Amazing Grace."
U. S. Ambassador Prudence Bushnell, no longer wearing bandages over the cuts she received in the bombing, promised that America would help East Africans through this difficult time.
The names of the hundreds who
"Together we will dispel the shadows of darkness, emerge from the veils of grief and create a brighter tomorrow," she said.
Terrorist bin Laden marked by determination
The Associated Press
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — It wasn't unusual to find wealthy Saudis on the periphery of the Afghan struggle against the Soviet Union. They'd arrive in Afghan refugee camps, open briefcases full of cash and distribute dollars to war widows and wounded veterans.
Osama bin Laden was unusual. The son of a Saudi construction magnate went into the rugged Afghan mountains to fight, gaining a reputation for bravery and determination. He used his millions to buy bulldozers to gouge guerrilla trails in the heart of Afghanistan and to bring in, by his count, thousands of Egyptians, Lebanese, Turks and others to join their Afghan Muslim brothers in the struggle against an ideology that spurned religion.
Nine years after the Soviets retreated from Afghanistan, terrorism experts say bin Laden is using his millions to finance
attacks against the United States such as, perhaps, the Aug. 7 bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, that killed 257 people. Veterans of the pan-Muslim army bin Laden raised to fight the Soviets remain loyal to the figure some call a hero.
Throughout the 1980s, the United States and
bin Laden: Experts say he finances terror attacks
the United States, bin Laden were on the same side against the now-collapsed Soviet state. Bin Laden made no secret that he saw secular, powerful Washington as much an infidel as Moscow. His first priority was Moscow, which invaded Afghanistan to prop up a communist government in December 1979.
Ine new outsiders who have met bin Laden
describe him as modest — almost shy. He rarely gives interviews. But he has allowed himself to be photographed, eyes staring intently into the camera under a white turban, his long, thin face made even longer by a brush of graying beard falling to his chest.
He is thought to be in his late 40s and to have at least three wives.
In a series of fatwas, or religious edicts, faxed to the outside world from his hideout in Afghanistan, bin Laden has laid out his case against the United States. Its soldiers protecting oil in his homeland are desecrating Muslim holy sites with their very presence, its power has emasculated Arab countries and its friend is Israel.
"We—with God's help—call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God's order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it," read a February fatwa.
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