Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and militant group, led since 1992, by its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. Hezbollah's paramilitary wing is the Jihad Council, and its political wing is the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc party in the Lebanese Parliament.
The Islamic Jihad Organization – IJO or Organisation du Jihad Islamique (OJI) in French, but best known as "Islamic Jihad" for short, was a Shia militia known for its activities in the 1980s during the Lebanese Civil War. According to investigative journalist Ronen Bergman, "Islamic Jihad" was one of many aliases used by Hezbollah. They demanded the departure of all Americans from Lebanon and took responsibility for a number of kidnappings, assassinations, and bombings of embassies and peacekeeping troops which killed several hundred people. Their deadliest attacks were in 1983, when they carried out the bombing of the barracks of French and U.S. MNF peacekeeping troops, and that of the United States embassy in Beirut.
Imad Fayez Mughniyeh, alias al-Hajj Radwan, was the founding member of Lebanon's Islamic Jihad Organization and number two in Hezbollah's leadership. Information about Mughniyeh is limited, but he is believed to have been Hezbollah's chief of staff and understood to have overseen Hezbollah's military, intelligence, and security apparatuses. He was one of the main founders of Hezbollah in the 1980s. He has been described as "a brilliant military tactician and very elusive". He was often referred to as an ‘untraceable ghost’.
Early on a Sunday morning, October 23, 1983, two truck bombs struck buildings in Beirut, Lebanon, housing American and French service members of the Multinational Force in Lebanon (MNF), a military peacekeeping operation during the Lebanese Civil War. The attack killed 307 people: 241 U.S. and 58 French military personnel, six civilians, and two attackers.
On 8 March 1985, a car bomb exploded between 9 and 45 metres from the house of Shia cleric Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah in Beirut, Lebanon, in a failed assassination attempt by a Lebanese counter-terrorism unit linked to the Central Intelligence Agency. The bombing killed 80 people and injured 200, almost all civilians.
The South Lebanon conflict, designated by Israel as the Security Zone in Lebanon Campaign, was a protracted armed conflict that took place in southern Lebanon from 1985 to 2000. It saw fighting between the Christian-dominated South Lebanon Army (SLA) and Hezbollah-led Muslim guerrillas within the Israeli-occupied "Security Zone"; the SLA had military and logistical support from the Israel Defense Forces over the course of the conflict and operated under the jurisdiction of the Israeli-backed South Lebanon provisional administration, which succeeded the earlier Israeli-backed State of Free Lebanon. It can also refer to the continuation of the earlier conflict in this region that began with the Palestinian insurgency in southern Lebanon, which targeted Christian Lebanese factions and Israel following the expulsion of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from Jordan after Black September. Historical tensions between Palestinian refugees and Lebanese factions fomented the violent internal political struggle between the latter. In light of these factors, the South Lebanon conflict can be seen as a part of the Lebanese Civil War.
Ali Akbar Mohtashamipur or Mohtashami was an Iranian Shia cleric who was active in the 1979 Iranian Revolution and later became interior minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He is "seen as a founder of the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon" and one of the "radical elements advocating the export of the revolution," in the Iranian clerical hierarchy.
The April 18, 1983 United States embassy bombing was a suicide bombing in Beirut, Lebanon, that killed 32 Lebanese, 17 Americans, and 14 visitors and passers-by. The victims were mostly embassy and CIA staff members, but also included several US soldiers and one US Marine Security Guard. It was the deadliest attack on a US diplomatic mission up to that time, and was considered the beginning of Islamist attacks on US targets.
The 2007 Lebanon conflict began when fighting broke out between Fatah al-Islam, an Islamist militant organization, and the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) on May 20, 2007 in Nahr al-Bared, a UNRWA Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli.
The 1983 Kuwait bombings were attacks on six key foreign and Kuwaiti installations on 12 December 1983, two months after the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing. The 90-minute coordinated attack on two embassies, the country's main airport, and petro-chemical plant was more notable for the damage it was intended to cause than what was actually destroyed. What might have been "the worst terrorist episode of the twentieth century in the Middle East" killed only six people because of the bombs' faulty rigging.
Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the government of Iran has been accused by several countries of training, financing, and providing weapons and safe havens for non-state militant actors, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and other Palestinian groups. These groups are designated terrorist groups by a number of countries and international bodies; however, Iran considers such groups to be "national liberation movements" with a right to self-defense in the face of Israeli military occupation.
The Lebanon hostage crisis was the kidnapping in Lebanon of 104 foreign hostages between 1982 and 1992, when the Lebanese Civil War was at its height. The hostages were mostly Americans and Western Europeans, but 21 national origins were represented. At least eight hostages died in captivity; some were murdered, while others died from lack of adequate medical attention to illnesses. During the fifteen years of the Lebanese civil war an estimated 17,000 people disappeared after being abducted.
The Tyre headquarters bombings were two suicide bombings against the Israel Defense Forces' headquarters building in Tyre, Lebanon, in 1982 and 1983. The blasts killed 103 Israelis and 46–59 Lebanese, wounding 95 people and were some of the worst losses ever for the IDF. The second attack occurred in November 1983 and was attributed to Hezbollah.
The 2012 Burgas bus bombing was a terrorist attack carried out by a suicide bomber on a passenger bus transporting Israeli tourists at the Burgas Airport in Burgas, Bulgaria, on 18 July 2012. The bus was carrying 42 Israelis, mainly youths, from the airport to their hotels, after arriving on a flight from Tel Aviv. The explosion killed the Bulgarian bus driver and five Israelis and injured 32 Israelis, resulting in international condemnation of the bombing.
The Iranian embassy bombing was a double suicide bombing that occurred in front of the Iranian embassy in Beirut, Lebanon on 19 November 2013. The two bombings resulted in 23 deaths and injured at least 160 others.
On December 15, 1981, the Iraqi Shi'a Islamist group al-Dawa carried out a suicide car bombing targeting the Iraqi embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. The explosion leveled the embassy and killed 61 people, including Iraq's ambassador to Lebanon, and injured at least 100 others.
On 12 November 2015, two suicide bombers detonated explosives in Bourj el-Barajneh, a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, that is inhabited mostly by Shia Muslims. Reports of the number of fatalities concluded that 43 people died directly from the detonation. Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Janet Lee Stevens was an American journalist, human rights advocate, translator, and scholar of popular Arabic theater. She lived in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War and chronicled the experiences of Palestinian refugees before and after the Sabra and Shatila Massacre of September 16–18, 1982.
