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Pan Am Flight 103

Pan Am Flight 103 was a Pan Am transatlantic flight from Frankfurt, West Germany to Detroit, United States that was destroyed by a bomb on 21 December 1988, killing 270 people (including 11 people on the ground in Lockerbie, Scotland). Most of the victims (187) were Americans (mostly from New Jersey and New York), while 43 were British. The CEO of Volkswagen, the CIA deputy station chief in Lebanon, and the UN Commissioner for Namibia were killed in the bombing, while Sex Pistols singer Johnny Rotten, the soul band The Four Tops, tennis player Mats Wilander, and actress Kim Cattrall were booked to board the plane, but ultimately did not make it. Initially, Iran's Guardians of the Islamic Revolution and the Islamic Jihad Organization/Hezbollah claimed responsibility for the bombing, ostensibly as revenge for the shootdown Iran Air Flight 655 on 3 July 1988, but Libyan agent Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was later arrested for his role in the attack, and Libyan Arab Jamahiriya dictator Muammar Gaddafi later claimed responsibility for the attack as revenge for Operation Eldorado Canyon.

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