September 11, 2001 attacks

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The September 11, 2001 attacks were four attacks by terrorists that happened on the same day. By the official account, people in the group al-Qaeda took over four airplanes and crashed three of them into buildings in the United States on purpose. Nearly 3,000 people died.

The World Trade Center on fire
The World Trade Center on fire

The four airplanes were:

  1. American Airlines Flight 11, which crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center
  2. United Airlines Flight 175, which crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center
  3. American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon
  4. United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed into the ground. The terrorists wanted to crash the plane into either the U.S. Capitol Building or the White House. The passengers tried to take over the plane, but could not save it, and it ended up crashing near the town of Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Everyone on all four planes died. All 19 terrorists were also killed in the attack. Both towers of the World Trade Center fell and were destroyed. Thousands of people in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon also died. This was the first big attack by non-Americans on the United States since 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

Many conspiracy theories have appeared which say that certain people in the United States government knew about the attacks beforehand, or even made them happen.

After the attack, the U.S. blamed al-Qaeda, and began a "War on Terror". The leader of al-Qaeda was named Osama bin Laden, and he lived in the country of Afghanistan. The U.S. told the government of Afghanistan, called the Taliban, to turn bin Laden over to the U.S., but they would not do this. The leader of the Taliban, Mullah Muhammad Omar, demanded to see evidence first from the U.S. government. President George Bush insisted he does not need to provide evidence [1] and the U.S. then went to war against Afghanistan. After that the U.S. government then accused Saddam Hussein of links with Al-Qaeda and went to war against Iraq.

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