Residents of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, are remembering those lost in a huge bomb attack on the Alfred P Murrah federal building on 19 April, 1995.
The massive 4,800lb device was detonated by a disgruntled 33-year-old from upstate New York, Timothy McVeigh, who had served during the first Gulf War in the US army.
McVeigh was apparently angry at the US government over the siege at Waco, Texas, in 1993 in which the FBI had surrounded a compound occupied by a religious cult, and where 86 people – many of them children – died. Many were burned to death. The siege ended on 19 April, 1993, two years to the day before the Oklahoma attack.
He was similarly incensed by the 1992 Ruby Ridge incident, when agents surrounded the Idaho home of Randy Weaver, and launched an 11-day siege that resulted in the deaths of his wife and children.
McVeigh and an accomplice, Terry Nichols, killed 168 people in the bombing incident and injured more than 600. The bomb wrecked scores of buildings and left a large hole in the ground.
The site is now occupied by a memorial – the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum.
It remains the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in the US, and until the attacks of 9/11 was the biggest.
McVeigh was sentenced to death and was executed in 2001. Nichols was sentenced to life without parole and remains in jail.
A third man, Michael Fortier was sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined him $200,000, for failing to warn the authorities of his former army friend’s plan.
Fortier’s wife, Lori, escaped prosecution after agreeing to testify against McVeigh and Nichols.
