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Getty ImagesA series of events will take place on Friday in the United States to mark the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
On Tuesday 11 September 2001, hijackers seized US passenger jets and crashed them into two New York skyscrapers, killing thousands of people.
The event had profound consequences across the globe.
Four planes flying over the eastern US were seized simultaneously by small teams of hijackers.
They were then used as giant, guided missiles to crash into landmark buildings in New York and Washington.
Two planes hit the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York, with the second strike 17 minutes after the first.
The buildings were set on fire, trapping people on the upper floors, and enveloping the city in smoke. In less than two hours, both 110-storey towers collapsed in massive clouds of dust.
A third plane destroyed the western face of the Pentagon – the giant headquarters of the US military just outside the nation’s capital, Washington DC.
The fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back. It is thought the hijackers had meant to attack Washington’s Capitol Building.
In total, 2,977 people (not counting the 19 hijackers) lost their lives, most of them in New York:
- All 246 passengers and crew aboard the four planes were killed
- At the Twin Towers, 2,606 people died – at the time or later from injuries sustained during the attack
- At the Pentagon, 125 people were killed
The youngest victim was two-year-old Christine Lee Hanson and the oldest was 82-year-old Robert Norton, who were both passengers on planes.
When the first plane struck, an estimated 17,400 people were in the two towers. Nobody survived above the impact zone in the North Tower, but 18 managed to escape from the floors above the impact zone in the South Tower.
Citizens of 77 different countries were among the casualties. New York City lost 441 first responders.
Thousands of people were injured, or later developed illnesses connected to the attacks, including firefighters who had worked in toxic debris.
Health problems linked to the dust and smoke from the towers’ collapse have since claimed more than threefold the number of lives lost in the attacks.
Getty ImagesAn Islamist extremist network called al-Qaeda planned the attacks from Afghanistan.
Led by Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaeda blamed the US and its allies for conflicts in the Muslim world.
The group’s Khalid Sheikh Mohammad allegedly devised the plot, and helped to recruit the pilots, some of whom trained in the US.
Getty ImagesNineteen people carried out the hijackings, working in three teams of five and one of four (on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania).
Fifteen of the hijackers were Saudis like Bin Laden. Two were from the United Arab Emirates, one was from Egypt and one was from Lebanon.
Less than a month after the attacks, then-US President George W Bush led an invasion of Afghanistan – supported by an international coalition – to eradicate al-Qaeda and hunt down Bin Laden.
However, it was not until 2011 that US troops finally located and killed Bin Laden in neighbouring Pakistan.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammad had been arrested eight years earlier in Pakistan in 2003.
Getty ImagesAl-Qaeda still exists. It is strongest in Sub-Saharan Africa, but even now has members inside Afghanistan.
US troops left Afghanistan in 2022 after nearly 20 years, stoking fears from many that the Islamist network could make a comeback.
Photo courtesy of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s legal teamBorn in Kuwait, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed studied engineering in the US before fighting in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
He was already wanted by the FBI before 9/11 because of his involvement in other bombings and thwarted attacks.
After his 2003 arrest, Mohammed spent three years at secret CIA prisons where he faced “brutal” interrogation techniques, according to US Senate Intelligence Committee findings.
He was ultimately sent to the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where he has remained.
A military court on the base has been considering whether and how he can be tried for his role in 9/11 for more than a decade, given concerns that his treatment while in US custody could undermine the evidence against him.
In January 2025, he and two other defendants – Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi – had been expected to plead guilty for their part in the attacks.
In return, they would avoid the death penalty, instead serving life sentences without parole.
But the plea deal was abandoned in July 2025 after the US government objected.
The trial for Mohammed and three co-accused is scheduled for June 2028.
Flight safety was tightened around the world in the years following the 9/11 attacks.
In the US, the Department of Homeland Security was established to prevent further terrorist attacks, Bush said. The Transportation Security Administration was also created to beef up security at airports and on planes.
It took more than eight months to clean up “Ground Zero” – the site of the fallen Twin Towers.
A memorial and a museum now stands on the site, and buildings have risen up again, to a different design.
Getty ImagesAt 1,776ft (541m), the completed centrepiece – the One World Trade Center, or “Freedom Tower” – stands even higher than the original North Tower which it replaced, which was 1,368ft (417m).
Reconstruction at the Pentagon took just under a year, with staff back in their offices by August 2002.
September 11 attacksNew York Cityal-QaedaOsama Bin LadenUnited StatesGeorge W Bush
