Beginning at 12:00 p.m. on 21 November 1979, a large mob of Pakistani citizens violently stormed the Embassy of the United States in Islamabad and subsequently burned it down in a coordinated attack.

[1][2] The riot was led by local Islamists aligned with the right-wing Pakistani political party Jamaat-i-Islami, and the mob primarily comprised students from Quaid-i-Azam University.

In addition to Islamabad, there were similarly large riots in Karachi, Lahore, and Rawalpindi, where a number of American cultural centers were attacked and burned down.

[3] By the morning of 22 November, the Pakistan Army moved in to retake the embassy grounds: two of the rioting students were killed and as many as 70 additional rioters were injured.

In 1977 Army Chief of Staff Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq overthrew and executed the secular Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in a 1977 coup d'état and began implementing Islamic law.

The group's demands included calling for the cutoff of oil exports to the United States and the expulsion of all foreign civilian and military experts from the Arabian Peninsula.

It was fueled by Voice of America reports that President Jimmy Carter had sent U.S. Navy aircraft carriers to the Indian Ocean in response to the ongoing Iran hostage crisis.

Ayatollah Khomeini praised the attack, while Zia-ul-Haq condemned it in a televised address, stating "I understand that the anger and grief over this incident were quite natural, but the way in which they were expressed is not in keeping with the lofty Islamic traditions of discipline and forbearance.

"[5] The attack is covered in the Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction books Ghost Wars by Steve Coll (in detail) and The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright (to a lesser extent).