US reels from audacious terrorist strikes
"NEW YORK - Plane crashes into New York World Trade Center."
It was with this first news bulletin at 8:55 am New York time that AFP launched its coverage of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, a terrorist strike of a scale never seen before.
There were many other bulletins over the day alerting the world to the horror unfolding in the United States as 19 Al-Qaeda suicide bombers rammed four planes into the heart of the United States.
"NEW YORK - Second plane hits World Trade Center towers - media."
"SARASOTA, Florida - Bush says World Trade Center towers blasts 'apparent terrorist attack'."
"NEW YORK - One of the World Trade Center's twin towers collapsed."
"NEW YORK - The second of the World Trade Center towers collapsed."
As reporters scrambled to cover the coordinated strikes on New York and Washington, there were many questions that could not be answered immediately: how many people were killed, who was responsible, why, how could this happen?
At the end of the day, AFP summed up events in the following story.
NEW YORK, September 11, 2001 (AFP) - Terrorists manning a suicide squadron of hijacked airliners struck at the economic and military heart of the United States on Tuesday, reducing the World Trade Center to rubble, punching a hole in the Pentagon and leaving the world's superpower reeling.
No death toll was immediately available from the worst terrorist assault in history beyond 266 people reported killed in four planes. But the media and some officials speculated it could rise into the thousands.
No group claimed responsibility for the air strikes but a US official said alleged Islamic terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden was suspected of being involved.
"Preliminary indications suggest that individuals associated with bin Laden or his Al-Qaeda network may be involved in these attacks," said the official, who asked not to be named.
The audacious attacks left the once-impregnable country feeling under siege, shocked by images of the trade center's landmark twin towers here collapsing in plumes of smoke and flames sprouting from the Pentagon, the symbol of American military might outside of Washington, DC.
- 'Freedom will be defended' -
Offices in New York and Washington were evacuated, leaving the streets of the two major US cities eerily calm.
Federal authorities closed all US airports in an unprecedented move, financial markets shut down and even the national pastime of baseball called it a day.
"Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward. And freedom will be defended," President George W. Bush said.
"Make no mistake: the United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts."
But the US government appeared clearly shaken by the bloody blow at its midsection that forced the evacuation of the White House, the State Department and other government buildings.
Bush, who was touring the southern states of Florida and Louisiana, was literally up in the air aboard Air Force One in the aftermath of the attacks, and eventually flew to a secluded air force base in the midwestern state of Nebraska.
The president made two statements to try to reassure Americans that all was under control but announced no concrete steps other than to place US forces on "high alert status" worldwide.
Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were nowhere to be seen. US Secretary of State Colin Powell was rushing back home from a tour of Latin America.
- How could it happen? -
And nobody was available to answer the question: how could the world's most advanced military power allow four coordinated airline hijackings that sent death planes screaming to its very core?
The attacks sent tremors across the globe, as well. 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.
(...)
Two commercial airliners slammed 18 minutes apart into the 410-metre-plus twin towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan shortly before 9:00 am, sending flames and smoke bursting from the upper floors and showering debris to the streets.
Terrified passers-by ran for their lives and office workers jumped from upper floors during the first attack just after the morning rush hour, witnesses said.
About 90 minutes after the first plane struck, the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed completely; the north tower, with television cameras still transmitting live pictures, disappeared from the New York skyline in a huge puff of smoke less than 30 minutes later.
A third plane rocked the five-sided Pentagon, triggering two explosions in the west side of the US Department of Defense in suburban Washington. A fourth airliner crashed in the northeast state of Pennsylvania.
- Death toll uncertain -
American Airlines said in a statement it had lost two planes with a total of 156 people aboard "in tragic incidents this morning"; United Airlines said it too had lost two planes with a total of 110 people.
(...)
An ashen-faced New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani, said no official figures for the number of dead were expected before Wednesday, but added that it will be "more than any of us can bear."
- Bin Laden suspected -
The Saudi-born Osama 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.
Bin Laden, the maverick scion of a wealthy Saudi family, has been stripped of his nationality and is living in Afghanistan as a "guest" of the ruling hardline Islamic Taliban militia.
But the Taliban immediately denied, through its ambassador in Pakistan, any role by Bin Laden, saying: "Osama is only a person -- he does not have the facilities to carry out such activities."
The attacks Tuesday triggered code-red security alerts worldwide, crisis meetings among leaders and a stunning dive in world stocks.
Security measures were tightened at US embassies, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) evacuated its Brussels headquarters.
(...)
- Palestinian refugees celebrate -
In Gaza City, Palestinian leader Yasser 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-Helweh 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, wiped off the New York skyline Tuesday, 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, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, and nine others were convicted of conspiracy and other charges related to the bombing.