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Rhein-Main Air Base bombing

1980s in Hesse1985 in West Germany1985 murders in GermanyAttacks on military installations in the 1980sAugust 1985 crimes
August 1985 events in EuropeBuilding bombings in GermanyImprovised explosive device bombings in 1985Murder in HesseRed Army FactionTerrorist incidents in Germany in 1985
RheinMainAirBaseFrankfurt1980
RheinMainAirBaseFrankfurt1980

The Rhein-Main Air Base bombing was a terrorist car bomb attack against the American Rhein-Main Air Base near Frankfurt am Main in West Germany on 8 August 1985. Two Americans were killed and more than 20 people were injured. The blast was powerful and caused debris and damage to the base including to 30 vehicles, trees and windows. The attack was orchestrated by the left-wing Red Army Faction (RAF) and the French Action Directe groups. It was the worst attack on an American installation in Germany since Ramstein Air Base was bombed in 1981, also by the RAF. The attack came less than two months after the Frankfurt airport bombing, although the two were not related.In preparation for the attack, RAF members lured and killed American soldier Edward Pimental in Wiesbaden. They used Pimental's identification to gain entry into the air base the next day where they carried out the attack. The bomb was placed in a Volkswagen Passat with fake American military plates.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Rhein-Main Air Base bombing (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Rhein-Main Air Base bombing
Frankfurt Flughafen (Süd)

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N 50.0298 ° E 8.5834 °
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60549 Frankfurt, Flughafen (Süd)
Hesse, Germany
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RheinMainAirBaseFrankfurt1980
RheinMainAirBaseFrankfurt1980
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Frankfurt Airport
Frankfurt Airport

Frankfurt Airport (IATA: FRA, ICAO: EDDF; German: Flughafen Frankfurt Main [ˈfluːkhaːfn̩ ˈfʁaŋkfʊʁt ˈmaɪn], also known as Rhein-Main-Flughafen) is a major international airport located in Frankfurt, the fifth-largest city of Germany and one of the world's leading financial centres. It is operated by Fraport and serves as the main hub for Lufthansa, including Lufthansa CityLine and Lufthansa Cargo as well as Condor and AeroLogic. The airport covers an area of 2,300 hectares (5,683 acres) of land and features two passenger terminals with capacity for approximately 65 million passengers per year; four runways; and extensive logistics and maintenance facilities. Frankfurt Airport is the busiest airport by passenger traffic in Germany as well as the 4th busiest in Europe after London–Heathrow, Paris–Charles de Gaulle and Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. The airport is also the 13th busiest worldwide by total number of passengers in 2016, with 60.786 million passengers using the airport in 2016. In 2017, Frankfurt Airport handled 64.5 million passengers and nearly 70 million in 2018. It also had a freight throughput of 2.076 million metric tonnes in 2015 and is the busiest airport in Europe by cargo traffic. As of summer 2017, Frankfurt Airport serves more than 300 destinations in 5 continents, making it the airport with the most direct routes in the world.The southern side of the airport ground was home to the Rhein-Main Air Base, which was a major air base for the United States from 1947 until 2005, when the air base was closed and the property was acquired by Fraport (now occupied by Terminal 3). The airport celebrated its 80th anniversary in July 2016.

1985 Frankfurt Airport bombing

On the afternoon of 19 June 1985, a bombing at the Frankfurt Airport, West Germany, killed three and wounded 74 people. The bomb had been placed inside a wastepaper basket in the departure lounge at the airport. When it exploded, the blast created a three-foot hole in the concrete floor of the terminal and destroyed many of the airline counters close to the counter of Alitalia Airlines. A police spokesman estimated the size of the bomb as weighing several kilograms. A witness to the explosion described seeing a grey suitcase with two handgrips that probably contained the explosives. Other witnesses described observinv a young man who ran away from the scene and fled in a blue Mercedes sedan. Two of those killed were Australian children, 2-year-old and 5-year-old siblings, and the third a Portuguese man. Shortly after the explosion, a travel agency at the train station in Munich received an anonymous phone call stating that an additional bomb would explode shortly in the departure hall of the Munich Airport. Police evacuated the airport and when no blast occurred, they surmised that the call was a hoax from someone who had heard about the explosion at the Frankfurt Airport. About 30 groups claimed responsibility, among them an unprecedented group calling itself Arab Revolutionary Organisation, having done so because of West German intelligence recruiting Arabs to assassinate members of Arab revolutionary movements in Lebanon. Other callers claimed responsibility for the explosion on behalf of Red Army Faction, but officials expressed doubt about that group, since the explosion happened in a manner that was not typical for that group. In July 1988, West German investigators concluded that the Palestinian Abu Nidal Organization, which itself had also claimed responsibility, had perpetrated the attack, and that the Libyan embassy in Bonn had pre-knowledge of the attack. The investigators also claimed that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi may have played a role in the attack.