8. The Orly Airport Attack
When the 1983 bomb exploded at Orly Airport in Paris, the attackers immediately knew they’d screwed up. Placed in a hold bag that was dropped at a Turkish Airlines check-in desk, it was supposed to detonate in midair, bringing the flight crashing to the ground. Carried out by Armenian terror group ASALA, it was meant to be a revenge attack for Turkey’s 1915 genocide. Instead, it wound up creating a catastrophic disaster on French soil.
The bomb had just reached the conveyor belt when it exploded, sending a wall of flames billowing out over the waiting crowd. The result was carnage on a massive scale. People in the line for the flight stampeded as a thick, acrid cloud of smoke descended, blinding them. Those nearest the blast had the clothes burned from their skin and suffered horrifying injuries. Others were seen staggering out on bleeding limbs. All in all, eight people died and another 55 were badly injured.
Responsibility eventually fell to ASALA member Varoujan Garabedian. Tried and jailed in the late 1980s, Garabedian was finally released and deported to Armenia in 2001. There, the Armenian prime minister personally greeted him as a returning hero.
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