The United States was pulverized by shock after terrorists killed thousands of people by using hijacked airliners as flying bombs, reducing New York's landmark World Trade Center to flaming rubble and setting the Pentagon ablaze.
On a black day in US history, compared by many to Japan's World War II raid on Pearl Harbor, a defiant President George W. Bush Tuesday, September 11, vowed to track down and punish those who snuffed out thousands of lives in "evil, despicable, acts of terror."
"We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them," Bush said, decrying the day "our way of life, our very freedom came under attack."
Shockwaves from the assault on the military and economic heart of the world's sole superpower rocked global markets, triggered a wave of military alerts and chaos as every civilian aircraft on US territory was grounded.
No group claimed responsibility — but several officials immediately shed suspicion on terror groups, including alleged terrorist mastermind Usama Bin Laden.
As night fell over New York, a gaping, smoky crater marked where the twin towers of the 110-floor World Trade Center, once a workplace for 40,000 people, had been ripped from the Manhattan skyline.
A staggering casualty toll was only starting to emerge — the city's firefighting union said at least 200 of its men died when first one, then the other twin tower, folded onto the streets below in a vast cloud of smoke and flames.
Usually teeming streets in one of the world's busiest cities were reduced to an eerie moonscape of white dust, soot and debris. A total of 266 passengers and crew perished on four jets commandered for kamikaze missions soon after taking off from Washington, Newark and Boston.
Outside Washington, firefighters battled late into the night to contain flames ravaging the bulk of the Pentagon — a huge hole blasted in the masonry by the hijacked commercial jet, which rammed the building soon after the New York attacks.
A day of carnage opened just before 9 a.m. (1300 GMT) when an American Airlines 767 hijacked from Boston was flown square into the middle of one of the twin towers, sparking an inferno.
Less than 15 minutes later, a second jet, a United Airlines 767 also hijacked from Boston, slammed into the second tower, as millions of horrified viewers watched on live television. Just 40 minutes on, an American Airlines Boeing 757 hijacked after takeoff from Washington's Dulles International Airport hit the Pentagon, across the Potomac River from the US capital.
A United Airlines 757, reportedly heading for more sensitive targets after being hijacked after leaving Newark International Airport, crashed near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, half an hour later.
For the first time in US history, all commercial airline traffic was grounded, as military scrambled and aircraft carriers moved into defensive positions off the coast. And in a chilling mobilization of plans prepared for a nuclear war, Bush, his family and top political leaders were sent to secure locations amid fears of further attacks, as lines of Americans lined up to donate blood to the wounded.
"Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror," said the president after he returned to Washington in his Oval Office address. "The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness and a quiet, unyielding anger," said Bush, who is only eight months into his presidency.
A US official said Bin Laden, based in Afghanistan, was suspected of being involved. "Preliminary indications suggest that individuals associated with Bin Laden or his Al-Qaida network may be involved in these attacks," said the official, who asked not to be named.
Bin Laden was already on the FBI's 10 most wanted list on charges of masterminding the 1998 bomb attacks against the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam that claimed 224 lives.
But the Taliban, which the United States accuses of harboring bin Laden in Afghanistan, immediately denied, through its ambassador in Pakistan, any role by bin Laden, saying: "Usama is only a person — he does not have the facilities to carry out such activities."
US financial markets were shut down through Wednesday and even the national pastime of baseball called it a day. The attacks were felt across the globe. Stock markets plunged, oil and gold prices soared and currencies were thrown into turmoil as world leaders, both friends and foes of the United States, rose in a chorus to condemn the carnage.
The attacks triggered code-red security alerts worldwide and crisis meetings among leaders. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) evacuated its Brussels headquarters and the alliance's secretary general, George Robertson, called an emergency meeting of member countries.
In Gaza City, Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat was among the first to condemn the attacks as a "crime against humanity" and offer to help Washington to find the culprits. "This is something that is not believable," he said. "I present my condolences to the American people and to President Bush and his government, not only in my name but in the name of all the Palestinian people."
But at the Ain Al-Hilweh and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon, dozens of Palestinian refugees fired assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades into the air with joy at news of the attacks.
The World Trade Center was already the target of a terror attack in 1993, when a massive car-bomb blast ripped through the complex housing businesses, government agencies and international trade organizations, killing six people. In 1995, a Muslim extremist, Shaikh Umar Abdul Rahman, and nine others were convicted of conspiracy and other charges related to the bombing. ― (AFP, New York)
© Agence France Presse 2001
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
