The US wants to make building a global coalition against terrorism a major priority, the Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, said last night following a meeting of the National Security Council. And he warned that the US was determined not only to make the terrorists who attacked the US pay for their crime but would do so for governments which harboured them.
"The United States of America will use all our resources to conquer this enemy," President Bush said earlier. "We will rally the world. We will be patient, we will be focused, and we will be steadfast in our determination.
"This battle will take time and resolve. But make no mistake about it, we will win." He spoke of the attacks as "an act of war", a theme to which many politicians and media commentators repeatedly returned. And last night there were even calls in Congress, which unanimously deplored the attacks, that war should be declared.
The mood in the country is angry, with some 90 per cent in a poll conducted by the Washington Post saying they would back military retaliation.
Yesterday a shocked nation, still terrified of what the death tally will end up as, began to take stock as police raised hopes that they were on the trail of the culprits with raids on a hotel in Boston, on homes in Florida and the revelation that they had found a car in Boston containing information in Arabic on how to fly a 767.
Agencies reported that documents were found inside luggage in the Mitsubishi Mirage that had Virginia license plates, including an information manual in Arabic on how to fly a 767, a copy of the Koran and a fuel consumption calculator. Attorney General Mr John Ashcroft told members of Congress the investigation was moving quickly.
Later armed police raided a Boston hotel and stopped a local train near Providence, Rhode Island. It was not clear if they made any arrests. A police officer is quoted as saying two hotel rooms had been connected to a name on the manifest of one of the hijacked flights.
In Florida the FBI joined local police in early morning raids on homes and businesses associated with a man who is understood to have trained locally to fly. Search warrants were served on homes in Davie and Coral Springs, two towns west of Fort Lauderdale, and agents searched businesses in Hollywood and a home in Sarasota County on the state's west coast, according to police and television reports.
Agents interviewed a former employee of a Florida flight school who may have housed two of the suspects in his home for a short time, and seized files and a computer from the school, a newspaper reported.
According to a local TV station, WSUN, the passenger manifests of the hijacked jets included the names of at least four Florida residents suspected of being supporters of Mr Osama bin Laden.
Authorities also were developing intelligence linking the suspected attackers to a band of Mr bin Laden's sympathizers in Canada, some of Algerian origin, who are suspected of planning an unsuccessful terrorist attack in the United States during the millennium celebrations.
Last night the White House let it be known that Mr Bush's criticised delay in returning to Washington on Tuesday was because they had real fears that the White House and Airforce One were specific targets of the terrorists.
About 50 embassies or US consulates, including those in Japan, Italy, Sweden, Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East, were closed or partially shut down as a safety precaution.
Meanwhile, flag sales soared across the country. Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, said it sold 88,000 American flags on Tuesday, compared with 6,000 flags on the same day last year.
The UN General Assembly opened its 56th session yesterday under the shadow of a terror attack on New York, observing a moment of silence for the victims before electing its new president.
The South Korean Foreign Minister, Mr Han Seung-soo, chosen to assume the presidency of the 189-nation body by acclamation, quickly took the podium to condemn "in the strongest possible terms these heinous acts of terror.
"Their primary target was by a vicious twist of fate located in the very city which is home to the world's foremost institution dedicated to promoting world peace," he told the new session.
"But no terrorist can ever deflect this body from the task to which it has dedicated itself since 1945 - ending the scourge of war in whatever form it may take once and for all," he said.
The assembly opening had been delayed for a day after the New York tragedy. Mr Han (64) took over from Mr Harri Holkeri, a former Finnish president and banker, who ended his one-year term on Monday with a call for a trimmed assembly agenda and fewer UN conferences, which reached a peak over the last year.