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40 years after bombing that killed Americans in Beirut, US troops again deploy east of Mediterranean
Forty years after the bombing that killed 241 U.S. troops in Beirut, the United States is again sending troops to the eastern Mediterranean as tension between Israel and Iran increases over the Israel-Hamas war
BEIRUT (AP) — Forty years after one of the deadliest attacks against U.S. troops in the Middle East, some warn that Washington could be sliding toward a new conflict in the region.
On Oct. 23, 1983, a suicide bomber hit an American military barracks at Beirut International Airport, killing 241 U.S. service members, most of them Marines – still the deadliest attack on Marines since the World War II Battle of Iwo Jima. A near-simultaneous attack on French forces killed 58 paratroopers.
Washington blames the bombings on the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, a claim the Iranian-backed Hezbollah denies. The U.S. and French forces were in Beirut as part of a multinational force deployed amid Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. The force oversaw the withdrawal of Palestinian fighters from Beirut and stayed afterward to help a Western-backed government at the time. The bombing prompted a U.S. withdrawal from Lebanon.
The United States is now deploying forces again in the region in connection to a war between Israel and its enemies.