O September 11th it was one of the most remarkable events of the 21st century. On that day in 2001, nineteen terrorists linked to a terrorist organization called al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial planes and launched them against important buildings in the U.S. In all, the attack resulted in the death of nearly three thousand people and generated an immediate reaction from the US government.
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What happened on September 11th?
On that day in 2001, terrorist attacks were carried out against two important buildings in the United States. The terrorists had three targets (they only managed to hit two of the three targets) that day:
towersTwins: two buildings over 400 meters high that were part of the World Trade Center, a financial complex located in New York.
Pentagon: US Department of Defense headquarters, located in Washington.
Capitol: seat of the United States Legislature, also located in Washington.
For the attack, 19 terrorists were trained by al-Qaeda, a terrorist organization known for having carried out a series of attacks throughout its existence. The terrorists boarded four different aircraft and, after they were in flight, announced the hijacking, surrendered the crew and redirected flights to their targets.
The four hijacked flights departed Newark, Boston, and Washington and headed for Los Angeles and San Francisco. O firstplane kidnapped took off from Boston and was launched against the TowerNorth, one of the Twin Towers, at the World Trade Center (WTC).
O secondplane was launched against the TowerSouth of the WTC; O third was launched against the Pentagon, and the roomplane would be launched against the Capitol, but the passengers on that plane reacted against the kidnappers and prevented that he was thrown against his target. Terrorists, cornered by passengers, shot down the plane in the countryside of a Pennsylvania city.
These events occurred successively, and the interval between the first and the fourth plane was only 77 minutes. The American authorities failed to predict the event, and when the first plane was launched, the situation in the United States was for a moment one of chaos.
Due to the attack on the Twin Towers, they caught fire, and the impact of the planes added to the fires caused the two towers to collapse: the first at 9:59 am and the second at 10:28 am. The images of the Twin Towers collapsing are among the most famous of the attack.
September 11 was the biggest terrorist attack the United States has suffered in its entire history. In addition to the material destruction and the psychological impact on the survivors, the attack resulted in thousands of deaths. The United States authorities said that the balance of the attack was of 2996 dead, among victims of New York, the Pentagon, planes (passengers and crew) and terrorists.
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Authors and causes of the attack
See now who organized and ordered the attack and what factors motivated the terrorists to carry it out.
authors
The attack was carried out by al-Qaeda, a terrorist organization that emerged in the 1980s during the afghan war (from 1979). THE al-Qaeda was led by osamabinladen, an Arab millionaire and one of the founders of the organization, and was involved in a series of terrorist attacks, in addition to having ramifications in different parts of the world.
In addition to Osama bin Laden, another important name in the preparations for the attacks was the Kuwaiti KhalidsheikhMohammed. This Kuwaiti, who belonged to the Pakistan-based al-Qaeda branch, was considered the attack architect and also responsible for a series of other terrorist attacks. He was involved in another attack on the World Trade Center, which was carried out with a car bomb in 1993.
Causes
The attack carried out by al-Qaeda was motivated by the ohatred cultivated by Osama bin Laden against the United States. He claimed the attack was motivated by the presence of American troops in the Middle East, American interference in Muslim countries, and American support for Israel.
Osama bin Laden's trajectory with Islamic fundamentalism (ideals emerged through a radical interpretation of the precepts of Islam) dates back to the 1979 Afghan War, when Americans began funding rebels against the Afghan government. After the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden was invited to join the fight against the Soviets and thus entered the underworld of the islamic radicalism.
Because of his involvement in the war, he was motivated to create his own organization and so, in the late 1980s, he founded al-Qaeda. Bin Laden decided to turn against the Americans after the government of Saudi Arabia decided to rely on the help of US troops instead of al-Qaeda troops during the Gulf War.
For this reason, Osama bin Laden created a strong relationship of enmity with the United States, starting to nurture the idea of revenge. In the late 1990s, he was presented with the idea of carrying out the attack we now call the September 11th Attack. From then on, the attack began to be planned.
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Consequences
The September 11 attack resulted in countless consequences, which go beyond the number of deaths and the material destruction it caused. This attack radically changed security measures for flights, not only in the United States, but around the world, and has caused the United States to create very strong anti-terrorism legislation. rigid.
The American president at the time, George W. bush, started the Warto theHorror, a fight against terrorism that was carried out in the Middle East. The first target of the Americans was the Afghanistan, since the Taliban, the governing group of that country, harbored al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
American troops overthrew the government that housed Osama bin Laden, but at a very high cost in human lives. To this day, Afghanistan suffers from the instability caused by the US invasion in 2001, and the number of civilians who died as a result of this war is in the thousands of people.
The United States has also launched a hunt against the two big names in the September 11 attack. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was arrested by the United States in 2003 and, today, he is in Guantanamo prison awaiting his trial, which will take place in 2021. Osama bin Laden has been hunted by the US government for years and dead by US troops in 2011.
Image credits:
[1]Ken Tannenbaum and Shutterstock
[2]Joseph August and Shutterstock
