Four crashed jets: 266 passengers on board
A total of 266 passengers and crew were on board the four jets which terrorists crashed in the United States today.
In a measure of the carnage on the ground, five hours after the attacks there were no estimates of the overall death toll, but hospitals around New York were struggling to cope with the casualties.
As shockwaves from the outrage reverberated around the world, British Prime Minister Tony Blair called an emergency meeting of the Cobra security committee and announced a range of security measures at British airports.
Mr Blair said Britain would stand full square alongside the US in the battle to drive the ‘‘new evil’’ of terrorism from the world.
Speaking in Downing Street, Mr Blair said: ‘‘This is not a battle between the United States and terrorism, but between the free and democratic world and terrorism.
‘‘We therefore here in Britain stand shoulder to shoulder with our American friends in this hour of tragedy and we, like them, will not rest until this evil is driven from our world.’’
Eyewitnesses gave stark descriptions of today’s carnage.
A female eye-witness in New York told CNN: ‘‘I saw people jumping off the building, there were many people just jumping.
‘‘Everybody was screaming, everybody was running, the cops were trying to maintain calm. People were stampeding, they started screaming that there was another plane coming. The second building just exploded, all the debris was flying towards us.’’
She added: ‘‘It was absolute horror. I can’t even look back there. My six-year-old boy asked me and my husband only last week to take him to the observation deck. But Americans will persevere, I don’t think we will stoop to the level of the zealot terrorist pigs.’’
New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani said urged people to be calm and to walk out of Lower Manhattan.
He did not even want to contemplate what the number of lost police officers and firefighters would be, he said.
‘‘When the building collapsed, we had a lot of police officers and firefighters in the building, and I know many of them, because I saw many of them go in, I’m praying for them.
‘‘The losses to our police and fire department are going to be severe.’’
He added: ‘‘I never thought I would see anything like this happen. I got there after the first plane hit and before the second. Watching people jump from the top of the World Trade Centre was an unbelievable sight.’’
Joe Trachtenberg told CNN that he was watching the scene from a high point on his building when the second crash took place about 18 minutes after the first.
‘‘The first tower was smoking hard. Then there was another plane, and before we knew, it just kamikaze went straight into the other tower. There was a mass explosion and windows flying. It was horrible.’’
James Winter, 30, a British worker living in an apartment close to the centre, said he had been woken by a huge bang at around 8.50am local time.
‘‘I was in bed and there was a huge explosion. The whole building rattled and shook. I ran to the window and there was smoke billowing from the south side of one of the towers.’’
Mr Winter, from Darlington, Co Durham, who works in one of the towers, said: ‘‘It will have been really busy with people arriving for work in the financial district. It is just unbelievable that this is happening. Both towers have been taken out. I just can’t believe this is happening.’’
World travel was thrown into chaos. Many US-bound flights had already left the UK when American officials closed all US airports.
Thousands of passengers, including the Duke of York, were diverted, or turned round mid-Atlantic.
In the UK, Queen expressed her ‘‘growing disbelief and total shock’’.
Workers in London left some high-profile buildings amid concern they could be the next target.
The London Stock Exchange, the Lloyds building, Canary Wharf and the NatWest Tower in central London were among those with workers streaming out as panic spread across the world.
Armed police were sent to the US embassy in London’s Grosvenor Square. Security was also stepped up at British military bases.
Outgoing Conservative leader William Hague suspended the party’s leadership election for 24 hours as a mark of respect to the victims of the terror attacks.
But in the West Bank and Gaza, thousands of Palestinians celebrated the terror attacks chanting ‘‘God is Great’’ and distributing sweets to passers-by, even as their leader, Yasser Arafat, said he was horrified.
The US Government has become increasingly unpopular in the region in the past year of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, with many Palestinians accusing Washington of siding with Israel.
As the US looked for a culprit, the name of world’s most wanted terrorist, Osama Bin Laden, came to the fore.
In June, a US judge set tomorrow as the sentencing date for a Bin Laden associate for his role in the bombing of a US embassy in Tanzania that killed 213 people three years ago.
The sentencing had been set for the federal courthouse near the World Trade Centre. No one from the US attorney’s office could be reached to comment on whether the sentencing was still on.
Bin Laden vowed just three weeks ago to unleash an unprecedented attack against the US.
An Arab journalist with access to the terror chief said bin Laden had warned of a ‘‘very big one’’ being planned by Islamic fundamentalists he leads.
Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi news magazine, said bin Laden was almost certainly behind the devastation in New York and Washington.
He said he had received information that ‘‘very, very big attacks against American interests’’ were being plotted.
Bin Laden, the son of a Saudi oil baron, has a £3m price on his head and is the FBI’s most wanted man.
His terrorist outfit was blamed for two bomb attacks on US embassies in Africa in August 1998, and also the 1993 bomb attack on the World Trade Centre.
