At about 10 p.m. local time on Tuesday, June 25, a fuel truck pulled up to the perimeter fence of Khobar Towers, an apartment complex housing military personnel from the United States, Britain and France. Two men got out, jumped into another car, and sped away.
A guard on the roof of one of the buildings -- about 100 feet away -- was watching and thought it looked suspicious. "I felt something was going to happen very soon," Sgt. Alfredo Guerrero later said. He began evacuating the building, but there wasn't enough time.
Four minutes later, after only two of the eight stories were cleared, the bomb in the truck exploded, tearing off the front of the building. Nineteen U.S. servicemen were killed and hundreds of people were wounded.
The United States did much soul-searching afterwards, debating the vulnerability of forces stationed abroad and the mistakes that contributed to the tragedy. It was charged that top officials underestimated the security threat; that a recommendation by a Pentagon expert to coat the windows at Khobar Towers with a protective film had been put off as too costly; and that a decision to push the perimeter fence farther away was scrapped when local Saudi officials objected.
President Bill Clinton vowed that "this murderous act must not go unpunished," but at year's end, no one was charged. The Saudi government, which was in charge of the investigation, said they were detaining dozens of people for questioning.
In July, U.S. and Saudi Arabian officials agreed to split the $200 million cost of relocating U.S. troops to a safer area southeast of Riyadh.
In late November, FBI Director Louis Freeh said he was "pleased with the efforts and thoroughness of the Saudi law enforcement authorities" to solve the bombing, though no arrests had been made.