Word: alexandria
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Nonetheless, with one bold, nonviolent stroke, the U.S. had erased four days of frustration, horror and humiliation, an all-too-familiar progression in the recent history of international terrorism. Once again Arab extremists had struck at a vulnerable civilian target. A few hours after it left Alexandria on a pleasure cruise of the Mediterranean, an Italian liner, the Achille Lauro, with 123 passengers and 315 crew aboard, was hijacked by Palestinian gunmen. Once again American passengers were singled out for especially brutal attention. One of them, Leon Klinghoffer, 69, of New York City, a stroke victim confined to a wheelchair...
...time the Italian liner Achille Lauro had reached Alexandria, on the fifth day of a Mediterranean cruise, its 755 passengers had settled into the pleasant routine of shipboard life. There were Ping Pong tournaments, shuffleboard games and lazy afternoons around the pool. In the evening there were dinner and dancing followed by midnight buffets, and every night a troupe of Polish dancers put on a ballet performance...
...group of eleven old friends from New York City and northern New Jersey. Mostly in their 60s and 70s, they liked to vacation together on the Jersey shore and sometimes called themselves "the beach people." On Sunday, the night before the 23,629-ton Achille Lauro reached Alexandria, they celebrated the 59th birthday of Marilyn Klinghoffer of Manhattan. It had been her idea that they should all take the eleven-day cruise from Genoa to Naples, Alexandria, Port Said, Ashdod, Limassol, Rhodes, Piraeus, Capri and back to Genoa...
Once his passengers had disembarked at Alexandria, Captain Gerardo De Rosa ordered the anchor raised, and soon the Achille Lauro was sailing for Port Said, at the northern approach to the Suez Canal, under a brilliant blue sky. + There, late that evening, he was scheduled to pick up the passengers who had gone to Cairo and proceed to the Israeli port of Ashdod...
...event, they decided to attack. Just four hours after the Achille Lauro had left Alexandria, the four Palestinians, armed with Soviet-made submachine guns, hand grenades and explosives, seized the ship. Firing their weapons wildly, the terrorists used the ship's loudspeaker system to summon all passengers to the dining room. "We were getting ready for dessert," one of the American passengers, Viola Meskin, of Union, N.J., later recalled, "when suddenly we heard gunshots, and someone yelled, 'Get down on the floor!' We heard moaning and groaning. The bandits had struck men in the kitchen, we were told. Then they...