Attack on the Egyptian Embassy in Pakistan

Carried out by the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the 19 November 1995 attack on the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad, Punjab, Pakistan was retaliation against the diplomatic staffers who were accused of gathering intelligence on Jihad factions inside Pakistan. It was the deadliest attack against the Egyptian government, since it had been declared apostate three years earlier by Islamic militants.

Ayman al-Zawahiri planned the attack in 1994, shortly after aligning himself together with Osama bin Laden, initially hoping to target the Khan el-Khalili marketplace on the same day. Members such as Abu Hafs claimed it was in response to Pakistan's extradition of several al-Jihad members to face imprisonment, torture and sexual abuse in Egypt. Al-Zawahiri later said that the group had wanted to target the American embassy, but it was too heavily fortified.

Two men approached the embassy at approximately 9:30 am and killed its security detail with their guns and grenades. A vehicle described alternately as either a pick-up truck or a small car resembling a taxi loaded with a 250-pound bomb then rushed into the compound. The driver set off the bomb, blowing apart the gates. Three minutes later, a Jeep carrying a second, larger bomb also detonated and the side of the building crumbled. The Japanese and Indonesian embassies were also damaged, as was a nearby bank.

The two bombers, the Second Secretary for the embassy, three Egyptian security guards and 12 others including Pakistani security guards, civilians and as many as four other diplomats were killed in total, and approximately sixty were wounded. A 17th person died in the hospital the following day.

It was the group's first success under Zawahiri's leadership, but Bin Laden had disapproved of the operation. The bombing alienated the host of the embassy, Pakistan, and Pakistan was "the best route into Afghanistan" Zawahiri later referred to the bombings in his autobiographical text.