9/11 is also, September 11th, 2001, when four commercial planes were hijacked to hit major United States government buildings.
It was a Tuesday morning and 19 men from a group called al-Qaeda boarded these four planes: American Airlines Flight 11, American Airlines Flight 175, American Airlines Flight 77, and American Airlines Flight 93. Flight 11 was hijacked by 5 men and flown into the World Trade Center’s North Tower at 8:46am. Flight 175 was also hijacked by 5 men and flown into the South Tower at 9:03am. The Five hijackers that were on 77 flew it into the Pentagon at 9:37am. The other flight, Flight 93, was controlled by the other four hijackers crashed near Shanksville Pennsylvania. The passengers on Flight 93 fought the hijackers and when the hijackers knew that the passengers might take back the plane they intentional rolled and crashed the plane. It is thought that that plane was heading towards either the White House or the Capitol.
The South Tower of the World Trade center fell at 9:59, after burning for 56 minutes because of the impact of Flight 175. The North Tower collapsed at 10:28, after burning for 1 hour and 32 minutes. Debris from when the North Tower fell fell on the 7 World Trade Center, causing it to burn as well. It also fell at 5:21pm. World Trade Center’s three through seven, St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and the Marriot Hotel were all damaged. 2,606 people died in the World Trade Center, 125 at the Pentagon, and 246 on the planes, 411 firefighters and policemen trying to rescue people or fight fires, making the death total 2,996 people.
Al-Qaeda was a group of Islamic Fundamentalists that believe that America should not have been helping Israel. They were lead by Osama Bin Laden, who was recently killed. He didn’t take credit for the attacks but did say, "Terrorism against America deserves to be praised because it was a response to injustice, aimed at forcing America to stop its support for Israel, which kills our people" Bin Laden justified his actions by calling it a holy war.
After the attacks there were many policemen and firefighters that took leave to go to New York City and help clean up. There was an increase in blood donations. It was declared a War on Terror and the United States planned on bring Bin Laden and al-Qaeda down. On October 1, 2001, the war in Afghanistan began.
I don’t remember being told about what had happened because at school I wasn’t. I was in kindergarten and the teachers and the older students knew. They kept us in school and didn’t tell us anything was wrong.
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