Health effects arising from the September 11 attacks
Within seconds of the collapse of the World Trade Center in the September 11 attacks, building materials, electronic equipment, and furniture were pulverized and spread over the area of the Financial District of Lower Manhattan. In the five months following the attacks, dust from the pulverized buildings continued to fill the air of the World Trade Center site. Many New York residents have reported symptoms of Ground Zero respiratory illnesses.
International Space Station image taken on September 11, 2001, with the smoke plume rising from Lower Manhattan and extending over Brooklyn (Expedition 3 crew)
September 12 from space: Manhattan spreads a large smoke plume
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist suicide terrorist attacks carried out by Al-Qaeda against the United States on September 11, 2001. That morning, 19 terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners scheduled to travel from the East Coast to California. The hijackers crashed the first two planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, two of the world's five tallest buildings at the time, and aimed the next two flights toward targets in or near Washington, D.C., in an attack on the nation's capital. The third team succeeded in striking the Pentagon, the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense in Arlington County, Virginia, while the fourth plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania during a passenger revolt. The September 11 attacks killed 2,977 people, making them the deadliest terrorist attack in history, and instigated the multi-decade global war on terror, fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere.
Top row: The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center burning 2nd row, left to right: Collapsed section of the Pentagon; Flight 175 crashes into 2 WTC 3rd row, left to right: A firefighter requests assistance at World Trade Center site; An engine from Flight 93 is recovered Bottom row: Flight 77's collision with the Pentagon as captured by three consecutive CCTV frames
Osama bin Laden in 1997–1998
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed after his 2003 capture in Rawalpindi, Pakistan
The North Tower shortly after the American Airlines Flight 11 crash. The first such attack.