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The Invasion of Grenada, also known as Operation Urgent Fury, was the 25-29 October 1983 United States-led invasion of the Caribbean island of Grenada amid the Cold War. The communist New Jewel Movement had seized control of Grenada in a 1979 coup, but, in September 1983, a power struggle broke out between the revolutionary Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and the military junta chairman Hudson Austin over Bishop's refusal to share power with Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard. On 19 October 1983, Austin seized power in another coup and had Bishop and several of his supporters killed. This government was close with Fidel Castro's Cuban regime, and a sizable force of armed Cuban construction workers ("citizen-soldiers") was sent to the island to build an airfield; other Eastern Bloc advisors from countries such as the Soviet Union, East Germany, Bulgaria, and Libya were sent to the island to support the revolutionary regime. However, President of the United States Ronald Reagan won the support of an alliance of Caribbean states to stage an intervention in Grenada to prevent the Cubans from asserting their influence over the island and to prevent the 600 American medical students on the island from being held hostage by the regime in a repeat of the Iran hostage crisis. On 25 October 1983, 7,600 American and Caribbean troops invaded Grenada, with the US Army Rangers and the US 82nd Airborne Division taking the Point Salines Airport on the south end of the island and the US Marine Corps landing on the north side of the island at Pearls Airport. The invasion was over within four days, and Austin's government was deposed by an interim advisory council until new elections could be held in 1984, with many liberated political prisoners being elected to public office. The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly criticized the invasion for violating international law, but the anniversary of the invasion was celebrated in Grenada as "Thanksgiving Day".

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