Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. (July 5, 2024): It has been twenty-eight years since the shock and horror of the Khobar Towers bombing but the sense of loss remains. In this photo by Senior Airman Briana Beavers, Airman 1st Class Bobbie Mills places a rose to honor a fallen Airman during a memorial ceremony held here this week. According to Air Force tradition, placing a flower at the feet of the service member’s boots recognizes and honors their lost lives.  

On June 25, 1996, Hezbollah terrorists detonated a truck bomb outside the gates to Khobar Towers, a residential housing complex used by the U.S. Air Force. Personnel belonging to the 4404th Wing, a rescue and fighter squadron, were participating in Operation Southern Watch that operated a no-fly zone operation in southern Iraq. The attackers were reported to have smuggled explosives into Saudi Arabia from Lebanon and then loaded them onto a sanitation truck. The explosion contained the equivalent of 30,000 pounds of TNT creating a blast so powerful it was felt twenty miles away in the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain.  

 In all, nineteen Airmen were killed, and another 498 personnel of many nationalities were wounded. In 2006, a U.S. court found Iran and Hezbollah guilty of orchestrating the attack and in 2020 ordered Iran to pay $879 million to the Khobar bombing survivors.