March 29, 2024

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Eglin’s 33rd Fighter Wing to honor victims

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EGLIN AFB — A solemn milestone will be noticed Friday morning at Eglin Air Power Base as airmen, relatives customers and other friends assemble to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia.

The Hezbollah terrorist truck-bomb blast on June 25, 1996, outdoors Khobar Towers, on the grounds of the King Abdulaziz Air Base, injured hundreds of armed service personnel in the complex and claimed the lives of 19 Air Power staff, including 12 airmen from the Eglin-headquartered 33rd Fighter Wing

Col. Michael Harner, the associate director of civil engineers at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., shows photos of himself June 9, 2016, following the terrorist attack on the Khobar Towers complex in Dharan, Saudi Arabia, on June 25, 1996. The photos included him receiving his Purple Heart and meeting former President Bill Clinton just days after the attack at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. The attack killed 19 Airmen and injured more than 350 people.

The airmen had been part of a a lot larger contingent of U.S. Air Power and spouse-country military personnel living in the Khobar Towers complex as they supported Operation Southern Check out. The operation bundled the enforcement of a no-fly zone in excess of southern Iraq to maintain then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from repressing Shi’ite Muslims and others in southern Iraq and possibly pushing into neighboring Kuwait.

From 2020:33rd Fighter Wing remembers airmen misplaced in Khobar Towers bombing