Fatalities

Fatalities

At the World Trade Center, faced with a desperate situation of smoke and burning heat from the jet fuel, an estimated 200 people jumped to their deaths from the burning towers, landing on the streets and rooftops of adjacent buildings hundreds of feet below (a reaction to the attacks similar to the effects of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and the burning of the General Slocum). In addition, some of the occupants of each tower above its point of impact made their way upward towards the roof in hope of helicopter rescue. No rescue plan existed for such an eventuality. By some accounts, fleeing occupants instead encountered locked access doors upon reaching the roof. As many as 1,366 people were trapped at and above the floors of impact in the North Tower (1 WTC). None of them survived. As many as 600 people were trapped at and above the floors of impact in the South Tower (2 WTC). Only about 18 managed to escape in time from above the impact zone and out of the South Tower before it collapsed.

As the suburbs around New York City learned of the destruction so close to home, many schools closed for the day, evacuated, or were locked-down. Other school districts shielded students from watching television because many of their parents held jobs in the World Trade Center towers. In New Jersey and Connecticut, private schools were evacuated. Scarsdale, New York schools closed for the day. In Greenwich, Connecticut, about 15 miles north of the city, hundreds of students had direct ties to victims of the attacks. Greenwich, one of the wealthiest towns in the world, had more residents killed than any other town in the area.

According to Associated Press, the city identified over 1,600 bodies but was unable to identify the rest of the bodies (about 1,100 people). They report that the city has "about 10,000 unidentified bone and tissue fragments that cannot be matched to the list of the dead" (AP, 23 February 2005).

Responsibility

The World Trade Center on fire. The plume of smoke escaping the towers would, upon the towers' ultimate collapse, go on to cover the entire lower portion of Manhattan as well as large sections of Brooklyn.
Clouds of smoke billow out of the Pentagon.
Lower Manhattan as seen from New Jersey, shortly after the attacks
Photo of the impact crater left by the crash of United Airlines Flight 93 in Shanksville, PA (USGS)
Security camera image of the moment that The Pentagon was hitMain article: Responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks
The United States government has blamed al-Qaeda for the 9/11 attacks. al-Qaeda claims responsibility for several attacks on U.S. military and civilian targets in Africa and the Middle East. Osama bin Laden, a leader of al-Qaeda has denied involvement and knowledge of the incidents. Bin Laden earlier declared a holy war against the United States. Shortly after the attacks, the United States government declared al-Qaeda and bin Laden the prime suspects.

In November 2001, U.S. forces recovered a videotape from a destroyed house in Jalalabad, Afghanistan which showed Osama bin Laden talking to Khaled al-Harbi. [6] In the tape, bin Laden admits to planning the attacks. The factuality of the tape is questioned in the Muslim world: "But the BBC's Middle East correspondent, Frank Gardner, says that at street level in the Arab world, many believe the tape is a fake, a PR gimmick dreamed up by the US administration." [7]. The tape was broadcast on various news networks in December 2001.

Osama bin Laden responded by reading a statement on September 16, 2001, "I stress that I have not carried out this act, which appears to have been carried out by individuals with their own motivation," which was broadcast by Qatar's Al Jazeera satellite channel. [8][9][10] This denial was broadcast on U.S. news networks and worldwide. The second public response was read on September 28 by Daily Ummat, a Pakistani newspaper. In it, bin Laden stated "I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children and other people. Such a practice is forbidden even in the course of a battle." [11][12]

Shortly before the US presidential election in 2004 in a taped statement, bin Laden publicly acknowledged al-Qaida's involvement in the attacks on the U.S, and admitted his direct link to the attacks. He said that the attacks were carried out because "we are a free people who do not accept injustice, and we want to regain the freedom of our nation." (full text)

A United States government task force known as the 9-11 Commission, and calling themselves "The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States", released its report on July 22, 2004, concluding that the attacks were conceived and implemented by al-Qaeda operatives. The Commission stated that "9/11 plotters eventually spent somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 to plan and conduct their attack", but that the specific origin of the funds used to execute the attacks remained unknown. To date, only peripheral figures have been tried or convicted in connection with the attacks.

Motive
According to official US Government sources, the September 11th attacks were consistent with the mission statement of Al-Qaeda. The group's involvement in the bombing of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania is widely suspected, and Al-Qaeda had declared responsibility for the 2000 USS Cole attack in Yemen.

The motivation for this campaign was set out in a 1998 fatwa [13] issued by bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Abu-Yasir Rifa'i Ahmad Taha, Shaykh Mir Hamzah, and Fazlur Rahman. The fatwa states that the United States:

Plunders the resources of the Arabian Peninsula.
Dictates policy to the rulers of those countries.
Supports abusive regimes and monarchies in the Middle East, thereby oppressing their people.
Has military bases and installations upon the Arabian Peninsula, which violates the Muslim holy land, in order to threaten neighbouring Muslim countries.
Intends thereby to create disunion between Muslim states, thus weakening them as a political force.
Supports Israel, and wishes to divert international attention from (and tacitly maintain) the occupation of Palestine.
The Gulf War and the ensuing sanctions against and bombing of Iraq by the United States, were cited, in 1998, as further proof of these allegations. To the disapproval of moderate Muslims, the fatwa uses Islamic texts to explain violent action against American military and citizenry until the alleged grievances are reversed: stating "ulema have throughout Islamic history unanimously agreed that the jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries".

Statements of Al-Qaeda recorded after 9/11 are suggested to add weight to this speculation. In a 2004 video, apparently acknowledging responsibility for the attacks, bin Laden stated that he was motivated to "restore freedom to our nation", to "punish the aggressor in kind", and to inflict economic damage on America. He declared that a continuing objective of his holy war was to "[bleed] America to the point of bankruptcy". [14]

Both the United States and Al-Qaeda present the conflict as a battle between Good and Evil.

The 9/11 Commission Report determined that the animosity towards the United States felt by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the so-called "principal architect" of the 9/11 attacks, stemmed "by his own account ... from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel." The same motivation has been imputed to the two pilots who flew into the WTC: Mohamed Atta was described by Ralph Bodenstein - who traveled, worked and talked with him - as "most imbued actually about... US protection of these Israeli politics in the region." Marwan al-Shehhi is said to have explained his humorless demeanour with the words: "How can you laugh when people are dying in Palestine?"

By contrast, the Bush administration says that Al-Qaeda was motivated by hatred of the freedom and democracy exemplified by the United States, and independent analysts say that one major Al-Qaeda motive is to encourage Islamic solidarity focussed on a common enemy, and thus in the long term help pave the way for an Islamic world order.

For details on other motives for the attack, see 9/11 conspiracy theories.

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