Terror in Oklahoma City

Car bomb rips federal building; 12 children among dead

News Wire Services

Published April 20, 1995 at midnight

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A huge car bomb tore apart a federal building in Oklahoma City Wednesday, killing at least 31 people, 12 of them children.

Authorities said more than 300 people were missing after the worst act of terrorism on U.S. soil. The death toll was likely to rise to 80 or more as rescue and body-recovery efforts wore into the night.

The blast blew away an entire side of the building, gutting several floors and sending glass shards flying through city streets.

"Our firefighters are having to crawl over corpses in areas to get to people that are still alive," Assistant Fire Chief Jon Hansen said.

Authorities said the confirmed fatalities included 12 children from a child-care center in the nine-floor Alfred Murrah Federal Building.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation was reported to be seeking three suspects, two described as of Middle Eastern appearance, seen in a brown Chevrolet pickup truck with tinted windows.

The blast brought mayhem and horror to an unlikely target in the heart of Middle America and stunned the country.

A grim and shaken President Clinton said: "The United States will not tolerate and I will not allow the people of this country to be intimidated by evil cowards."

He vowed swift and severe justice for the killers.

U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno told a White House briefing that only 250 of the 550 people assigned to the federal building had been accounted for. ''The death penalty is available and we will seek it," she said.

Police said about 60 people had been taken to hospitals in critical condition. The confirmed death toll quickly overtook the 1993 explosion at the World Trade Center in New York that killed six and injured 1,000 others.

Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating said rescue workers using body-sniffing dogs had pulled three people from the wreckage and were talking to a woman who was trapped in the basement.

However, two of the three died shortly after their rescue, said assistant fire chief Jon Hansen.

In one case workers had to amputate a woman's leg to free her from the crumbling building. The federal building housed several U.S. agencies including the FBI and the Secret Service.

U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Director John Magaw said a preliminary evaluation indicated that "a vehicle was pulled up in front of the building and it detonated it shortly after 9 o'clock . . . and that it (the bomb) was around a 1,000 to 1,200 pounds."

Bleeding and dazed people staggered screaming and shouting from the gutted building. Scores were treated at the scene, many as they lay on the ground.

One woman, her head swathed in bandages spattered with blood, sobbed that she might have lost her two young children and her husband.

"Whoever did that act, I hope you're happy," she sobbed.

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