It’s been 23 years since terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes in a coordinated attack that killed 2,977 people in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001.
On September 11, 2001, terrorists linked to the Islamic extremist group al Qaeda – founded by Osama bin Laden – hijacked four commercial passenger airplanes and carried out suicide attacks against targets in the United States.
Two of the planes were flown into the World Trade Center in New York City. Within a few hours, both of the twin towers collapsed into rubble, demolishing a large section of lower Manhattan. A third plane hit the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. The passengers and crew of the fourth plane fought back, and the plane was downed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Almost 3,000 people were killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, including the 19 al Qaeda terrorists. The administration of President George W. Bush responded by declaring a “war on terrorism.”
Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the September 11th attacks, remained at large until May 2, 2011, when he was finally tracked down and killed by US forces at a hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan. In June 2011, then-President Barack Obama announced the beginning of large-scale troop withdrawals from Afghanistan; it took until August 2021 for all US forces to withdraw.
