“The most significant security incident to date targeting Saudi [oil] facilities came…on February 24, 2006. Terrorists affiliated with AQAP [Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] attacked the Saudi Aramco-operated refinery at Abqaiq, which processes two-thirds of Saudi Arabia’s crude oil. …Local news sources played down the incident, with Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi security adviser, telling […]
2/24/2006
“In February [24] 2006, al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia unsuccessfully attacked the Abqaiq facility, perhaps the most important oil production facility in the world, through which approximately 10 percent of the world’s oil supply flows.” – Peter Bergen, The Longest War, Page 210 […]
2/24/2006
“By 2006 the Saudi counteroffensive against al Qaeda was having significant results. The Saudis foiled more than a hundred attacks and killed or captured over 260 operatives, including all but one of the twenty-six most wanted. Even a major attack on the Abqaiq oil-processing center in the Eastern Province on February 24, 2006–the facility where […]
2/24/2006
“The February [24] 2006 terrorist attack on Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia’s vast seven-million-barrel-a-day crude-oil processing facility, failed, but not by much. By some accounts the attackers penetrated the first line of defense. Had they succeeded, the resultant oil price surge would have severely unsettled world financial markets and, depending on the extent of the oil facility […]
2/22/2006
“On February 22, 2006, two huge bombs destroyed the Golden Mosque in Samarra [Iraq], one of the holiest sites for Shi’ite Muslims.” – Andrew Langley, Bush, Blair, and Iraq: Days of Decision, Page 42 […]
2/22/2006
The Golden Mosque in Samarra, Iraq, one of the holiest Shiite sites, was bombed on February 22, 2006. “That evening, [President] Bush read his nightly report on Iraq and found a grim assessment. ‘For the first time,’ said the report prepared by [Iraq advisers] Meaghan O’Sullivan, Brett McGurk, and the Iraq team, ‘all of our […]
2/22/2006
The shrine of the Two Imams in Samarra, Iraq, was bombed on February 22, 2006, “at the hands of extremists linked to al-Qaeda. …It was one of the four ‘atabats (thresholds) in Iraq, and the destination of millions of pious Shi’a pilgrims. Sunnis also venerated the shrine and visited it in large numbers. The news […]
2/22/2006
“U.S. intelligence officials now candidly admit that the turning point of the war in Iraq occurred in February [22] 2006, when Sunni insurgents bombed a mosque in the city of Samarra, which was one of the holiest shrines for Iraqi Shi’ites. The Samarra bombing unleashed a wave of sectarian fighting that led to unprecedented slaughter […]
2/22/2006
In Iraq, on February 22, 2006, “a powerful bomb shattered the golden dome of one of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam, the Askariya shrine in the city of Samarra, some sixty miles north of Baghdad. The explosion, believed to be the work of Al Qaeda in Iraq, ignited a nationwide wave of sectarian violence. […]
2/22/2006
“On February 22, 2006, al-Qaeda made its boldest attempt to spark a civil war [in Iraq] by bombing the ‘Golden Mosque’ in Samarra, sixty-five miles north of Baghdad. …No one was killed when two powerful bombs were detonated at dawn, but the gilded dome of one of Shiite Islam’s holiest sites was shattered. This attack […]