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September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11, 2001 attacks (often referred to as 9/11) were a series
of coordinated terrorist attacks upon the United States carried out on
Tuesday, September 11, 2001.
September 11 Collage
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That morning, 19 men affiliated with al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial
passenger jet airliners. With jet fuel capacities of nearly 24,000 U.S.
gallons (91,000 liters), each aircraft effectively became an incendiary
guided missile. One member of each hijack team was a trained pilot.
The pilots of two teams crashed two planes into the Twin Towers of the World
Trade Center in New York City, one plane into each tower, which caused both
towers to collapse within two hours.
The pilot of the third team crashed a plane into the Pentagon in Arlington
County, Virginia. The Pentagon was severely damaged during the attack, and
125 lives were lost.
Passengers and members of the flight crew on the fourth hijacked aircraft
attempted to retake control of their plane from the hijackers; that plane
crashed into a field in rural Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Captured
al-Qaeda leader Khalid Shaikh Mohammed said that the target for this flight
was the United States Capitol.
Approximately 3,000 people died in these attacks, with at least 2985 people
killed: 265 on the four planes, 2595 in New York City in the towers and on
the ground (including 343 New York City Fire Department firefighters, 23 New
York City Police Department officers, and 37 Port Authority police
officers), and 125 civilian and military personnel at the Pentagon. No one
survived in any of the hijacked aircraft.
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