What happened to the September 11 attack, and how many people died?

A series of events will be held in the United States on Thursday to mark the 24th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, suicide attackers caught a U.S. passenger jet and crashed them into two New York skyscrapers, killing thousands of people.

The activity has far-reaching consequences worldwide.

The small hijackers caught four planes flying across the eastern U.S. at the same time.

They were then used as giant missiles, crashing into landmarks in New York and Washington.

Two planes crashed into the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center in New York, a second strike after the first one.

The buildings caught fire, capturing people on the upper floors and shrouding the city’s smoke. In less than two hours, the towers on both floors fell into huge dust.

The third plane destroyed the west side of the Pentagon – the U.S. military headquarters outside the U.S. capital, Washington, DC.

The fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania after passengers counterattacked. It is believed that the hijackers were intended to attack the Capitol in Washington.

A total of 2977 people (not counting 19 hijackers) were killed, most of them in New York:

• All 246 passengers and crew were killed
• On the Twin Towers, 2,606 people died – at that time or later due to injuries during the attack
• In the Pentagon, 125 people were killed.

The youngest victim was Christine Lee Hanson, two years old, and the oldest was Robert Norton, 82, who were both passengers on the plane.

When the first plane crashed, an estimated 17,400 people were in the two towers. No one survived the impact area of ​​the North Tower, but 18 managed to escape from the floor above the impact area of ​​the South Tower.

Citizens in 77 different countries were casualties. New York City lost 441 first responders.

Thousands of people were injured, or later suffered from attack-related illnesses, including firefighters working in toxic debris.

The Islamic extremist network, called al-Qaeda, planned an attack in Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, blames the United States and its allies on conflict in the Muslim world.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammad of the group is believed to have designed the plot and helped recruit pilots, some of whom train in the United States.

Nineteen people carried out the hijacking, five and four teams working in three teams (on a plane crashed in Pennsylvania).

15 hijackers are like Bin Laden. Two people are from the United Arab Emirates, one from Egypt and one from Lebanon.

Less than a month after the attack, then-U.S. President George W. Bush led an invasion of Afghanistan in the coalition-backed international-backed Afghanistan to eliminate Al-Qaeda and hunt Bin Laden.

However, it was not until 2011 that the U.S. military finally found and killed bin Laden in neighboring Pakistan.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was arrested in Pakistan eight years ago in 2003.

Al Qaeda still exists. In sub-Saharan Africa, it is the strongest, but even now, there are members in Afghanistan.

Nearly 20 years later, U.S. troops left Afghanistan in 2022, with many worried that the Islamic network could make a comeback.

Born in Kuwait, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed studied engineering in the United States before fighting in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

He was wanted by the FBI until 9/11 because of his involvement in other explosions and foiling attacks.

After being arrested in 2003, Mohammed spent three years with the CIA, where he faced cruel interrogation skills before being sent to the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he remained there.

A military court at the base has been considering whether and how to try his role for more than a decade in 9/11, fearing that his treatment during his detention in the United States would undermine evidence against him.

In January 2025, he and two other defendants – Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak bin Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Ahmed Adam al -Hawsawi – are expected to plead guilty to their attack. In return, they will avoid the death penalty instead of serving their sentence without parole.

But the day before the hearing, U.S. Federal Court of Appeals ceases lawsuit Consider the U.S. government’s request to waive a plea agreement, which it claims will cause “irreparable” harm.

July, Court formally rejects plea agreement.

It is not clear what will happen next.

In the years following the 9/11 attacks, flight safety around the world has been tightened.

In the United States, the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) was created to enhance safety at airports and on aircraft.

It took more than eight months to clear the “Ground Zero” (the location of the fallen Twin Towers).

Now, the memorial and museum stand on the scene, the building is once again elevated to another design.

The complete core (a World Trade Center or “Freedom Tower”) is at a position of 1,776 feet (541m) and even higher than the original north tower it replaced, i.e. 1,368 feet (417m).

The Pentagon was rebuilt less than a year, and staff returned to the office before August 2002.