Thousands of people are feared dead in the US after four hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and an area in Pittsburgh this afternoon. President George Bush has put the country on full war alert.
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US fighter aircraft have been scrambled and are patrolling the skies above the capital. No-one has claimed responsibility for the attack.
The US Federal Aviation Administration confirmed this evening that four commercial flights, two United Airlines planes and two American Airlines planes, were diverted, believed hijacked.
It is understood these four planes were used in the attacks. A fifth plane which was reported missing has now been accounted for by the authorities.
The twin towers of the World Trade Center, which houses up to 30,000 residents and workers collapsed after the two planes crashed into it shortly before 2 p.m. Irish time.
Loss of life from the attacks was feared to be catastrophic and could number in the hundreds or even thousands.
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World Trade Center burning after two planes crashed into it
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The twin towers of the World Trade Center, which houses up to 30,000 residents and workers collapsed after the two planes crashed into it shortly before 2 p.m. Irish time.
Millions around the world watched on live TV after first one plane then another slammed into the 110-storey twin towers of the World Trade Centre.
Within an hour the most powerful symbols of US economic power had collapsed, thousands were feared to have died and the most famous skyline in the world had been changed forever.
As New York reeled, Washington, the US capital, was under fire. A passenger airliner crashed into the Pentagon, the heart of the US military machine.
Another passenger plane crashed about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. All 45 people on board are believed dead.
A total of 266 passengers and crew were on board the four jets.
In a carefully-planned operation which lethally exposed flaws in US airline security, suicide bombers had seized the four airliners on domestic flights.
The attacks brought the nation to a standstill. Airports were closed, flights were grounded and borders were sealed, jet fighters were scrambled above major cities, as the US tried to comprehend the enormity of what had happened.
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Rescue workers at
the World Trade Center |
For many it was the nation's greatest humiliation since Pearl Harbor, the attack which triggered US entry into the Second World War.
The first strike was against the Trade Centre. A jet smashed high up into one of the towers where tens of thousands of people work every day.
As horrified witnesses described the terrifying scenes, a second jet was filmed by CNN slamming into the second tower lower down, bursting into flames and leaving another gash in the building.
Smoke poured from the two towers. Eye-witnesses reported seeing bodies plunging from the buildings as the flames spread out of control.
Shortly afterwards, a third plane crashed into or near the Pentagon in Washington, throwing people off their feet inside the building and touching off a big fire.
At least one side of the Pentagon has collapsed and the building is still on fire.
Within an hour, both towers in New York had collapsed, sending clouds of dust billowing down the streets of Manhattan and across the harbour as survivors, many of whom were staggering from the building after the attacks, fled for their lives.
On a school visit in Florida at the time, US President George Bush, who did not return to Washington immediately, put the military on high alert.
Mr Bush said: "Make no mistake, the United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts."
United Airlines's pilots union said United Flight 175 crashed into the Trade Centre. But the airline had no immediate comment.
An emergency phone operator in Pennsylvania, received a mobile phone call at 9:58 a.m. (14:58 p.m. Irish time) from a man who said he was a passenger locked in the bathroom of United Flight 93, said dispatch supervisor Mr Glenn Cramer.
"We are being hijacked, we are being hijacked!" Mr Cramer quoted the man as saying. The man told said the plane "was going down. He heard some sort of explosion and saw white smoke coming from the plane and we lost contact with him," Mr Cramer said.
Afghanistan's hard-line Taliban rulers condemned the attacks and rejected suggestions that bin Laden was behind them, saying he does not have the means to carry out such well-orchestrated attacks.
There was no attempt to minimise the impact.
"This is the second Pearl Harbour. I don't think that I overstate it," said Senator Chuck Hagel, referring to the attack 60 years ago that surprised the United States and propelled it into the Second World War.
American Airlines identified the planes that crashed into the Trade Centre as Flight 11, a Los Angeles-bound jet hijacked after takeoff from Boston with 92 people aboard, and Flight 77, which was seized while carrying 64 people from Washington to Los Angeles.
In Pennsylvania, United Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757 en route from Newark, New Jersey, to San Francisco, crashed about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh with 45 people aboard. The fate of those aboard was not immediately known and it was not clear if the crash was related to the disasters elsewhere.
In a statement, United Airlines said another of its planes, Flight 175, a Boeing 767 bound from Boston to Los Angeles with 65 people on board, also crashed, but it did not say where.