US Bombing of Tripoli — Operation El Dorado Canyon
American aircraft bombed Tripoli and Benghazi on the night of 15 April 1986, in what Washington called a response to terrorism and Libya called an assassination attempt. The immediate trigger was a bomb in a West Berlin discotheque frequented by American servicemen on 5 April, which killed two soldiers and a Turkish woman and injured over two hundred. Intercepted communications between Tripoli and the Libyan mission in East Berlin were cited as proof of Libyan responsibility, and the Stasi files opened after 1990 substantially confirmed it. The background was longer: Gaddafi's funding of a very wide range of armed movements, the claim to the Gulf of Sidra as territorial waters, and two air engagements over it. The raid involved about a hundred aircraft. France, Spain and Italy refused overflight rights, which forced the F-111s flying from Britain to go round the Iberian peninsula — a round trip of some 6,400 miles with multiple refuellings, then the longest combat mission ever flown. Targets included the Bab al-Azizia barracks where Gaddafi lived. He was not there or was not hit; his adopted infant daughter was killed, along with somewhere between fifteen and a hundred others depending on the source. The UN General Assembly condemned it. Libyan-sponsored attacks continued, and the Lockerbie bombing of December 1988, which killed 270, is widely read as the answer. Gaddafi accepted responsibility for Lockerbie and paid compensation in 2003, and relations were normalised. He was killed by his own people in 2011, and the country has not had a single government since.
- Year: 1986 CE
- Category: War
