On 20 August 1998, the factory was destroyed in cruise missile strikes launched by the United States military allegedly in retaliation for the truck bomb attacks on its embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, on 7 August. The administration of President Bill Clinton justified the attacks, dubbed Operation Infinite Reach, on the grounds that the al-Shifa plant was involved with processing the deadly nerve agent VX, and had ties with the Islamist al-Qaeda group of Osama bin Laden, which was believed to be behind the embassy bombings and Operation Bojinka, an alleged large-scale terrorist plot. U.S. action on 20 August also hit al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, where bin Laden had moved following his May 1996 expulsion from Sudan.