How many victims have there been?
The total death toll of the attack is 2,977, with the addition of the 19 bombers divided among the four planes. In total, 2,606 people died between the twin towers alone, 246 passengers hosted by the four flights and 125 people in the Pentagon. Among the rescuers who intervened in New York, the highest price was paid by the firefighters of the New York City Fire Department: 343 firefighters killed during the rescue operations of citizens. According to the reconstruction of the commission of inquiry of the US government, inside the two towers there were a total of 17,400 people: none of those trapped in the upper floors of the North tower, above the exact point of the crash of the plane, survived. , while 18 people stuck in the same condition in the south tower found an escape route.
Who is responsible?
The attack is claimed by Al-Qaeda, in Arabic “the base”, a Sunni terrorist organization led by Osama Bin Laden: a Saudi fundamentalist, coming from a very rich family of builders in Jeddah, who became known during the years of the guerrilla war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and then among the main public enemies of the United States. The motivation is the involvement of the US in conflicts “against Muslims”, in addition to its support for Israel. The 19 jihadists carrying out the attack are divided into three teams of 5 people and one of four: 15 are Saudis, two Emiratis, one Egyptian and one Lebanese. The terrorists who are physically involved in hijacking the plane had been trained in aviation in the United States.
Why the Twin Towers?
In reality, all four objectives of the attack had a symbolic value in the war of Al Qaeda against the United States. The Pentagon is the nerve center of Washington’s military power. Capitol Hill, the only one of the four targets to come out intact, is home to Congress and therefore the legislative power of the United States. The case of the Twin Towers has become synonymous with the entire attack both for the specific weight on the attack, with its more than 2,600 victims, and for the wide spread of video and audio testimonies that immortalize the “wound of the West” in a of its moral capitals, New York. The twin towers, 417 and 415 meters high, towered over Manhattan and were hosted by the World Trade Centers, a financial complex in the heart of the metropolis: a metaphor for the economic power of the United States and globalization, as well as an effective place for trade and billion-dollar operations.
What happened after 9/11?
The attack sparked the immediate reaction of the US, with the war in Afghanistan to eradicate the Taliban regime (close to Al Qaeda) and neutralize Bin Laden himself. The US intervention overthrew the Taliban regime, which returned to prominence exactly two decades later with the farewell of American troops to the country in August 2021 and the reconquest of Kabul. In 2003, in the midst of the “War on Terror” launched by the then President George W. Bush, the US leads an international coalition in a second conflict against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq (although no links to the attacks of the September 11, nor the presence of “chemical weapons” denounced as one of the triggering causes of the attack).
Bin Laden, on the other hand, will only be eliminated in 2011, with a raid on his hiding place in the Pakistani capital Islamabad. The World Trade Center was rebuilt in New York, on the ashes of the previous site, with a single skyscraper replacing the two towers: the One World Trade Center, also known as the Freedom Tower.