Terrorists have attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon by deliberately crashing planes into them. One of the planes that crashed into the WTC was a hijacked American Airlines 767 out of Boston, I don’t know about the others.

Latest news: all flights in the U.S. are grounded, and all planes were ordered to land at the nearest airport. One of the two towers of the WTC has collapsed (at least partially). According to the news, there can be up to 100,000 people in the WTC at any given time.

I’m finding it hard to get to online news sites. You can get a live audio stream from the BBC World Service at Yahoo Broadcast, that’s what I’m listening to.

I’ve now heard from a number of sources that the second tower collapsed completely after it was hit by a third plane (the second to hit that tower in particular). This was just a rumor, there was no third plane to hit the WTC.

A car bomb has exploded outside the State Department.

Yet another plane has been hijacked and is reportedly headed toward Washington DC. All international flights approaching the U.S. have been diverted to Canada. Congressmen have been evacuated to an underground bunker. I’ve heard many comparisons to Pearl Harbor at this point. Explain to me again why we pump all that money into the NSA and CIA? How did we have no idea that this was coming?

The 911 control center for New York City is (was?) in the World Trade Center. Needless to say, it’s down.

Both towers of the WTC have now collapsed. No idea whether this was due to further explosions or loss of structural integrity caused by the original explosions.

Another 747 out of Pittsburgh was hijacked, tailed by U.S. fighters, and crashed at Somerset County Airport in Pennsylvania. This may be the plane that I mentioned earlier as being hijacked. (Some are reporting that this plane was shot down.)

According to a correspondent in Greece, I hear the following (none of this have I confirmed myself):

  • The first plane was a 747 from American Airlines (capacity 158). (This doesn’t sound quite right, 747s hold more than that. Perhaps this plane was a 737 or 767.)
  • The second plane was a 767 from United Airlines. (The BBC is reporting that the UA plane is a 737B.)
  • The plane that hit the Pentagon was a small passenger plane.

The BBC is now reporting that F-16s have been sent to intercept a hijacked plane that is headed for Washington, DC. This must be the plane mentioned earlier. The plane from Pittsburgh that crashed in Somerset County is not the plane that is being intercepted. The BBC is reporting that the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania was a 767, not a 747.

ABC is reporting that there was not a car bomb at the State Department after all.

There are reports that Osama bin Laden warned the U.S. three weeks ago that we would suffer an unprecedented attack. Still awaiting more details on this.

Part of the Pentagon has collapsed. Famous buildings all over the country are being evacuated, including all federal buildings in Washington DC and the Sears Tower.

I just heard that a plane crashed at Camp David.

From a news report:

American Airlines confirmed today that it lost two aircraft in tragic incidents this morning. American said the flights were Flight 11, a Boeing 767 en route from Boston to Los Angeles with 81 passengers, nine flight attendants and two pilots; and Flight 77, a Boeing 757 operating from Washington Dulles to Los Angeles with 58 passengers, four flight attendants and two pilots.

Here’s a timeline of the attacks. (It’s a link to Nando, and may be slow.)

40,000 people normally worked in the World Trade Center on any given day. (That, of course, doesn’t include tourists and other miscellaneous folks.) I’ve heard reports that people from a firm on the 91st floor of one of the towers were evacuated successfully.

The pace of news seems to have slowed. I’m headed home for the rest of the day. I may post some udpates later if I get the chance. My thoughts are with the people affected by this awful event.

President Bush is at Barksdale Airforce Base, in Louisiana. I’ve been watching the news and I’m still not sure how many planes were hijacked or where they wound up. After half an hour or so of watching the news, it’s difficult to know how much I’ve reported so far is true and how much is conjecture. The military’s level of readiness is currently Delta (war level).

The facts are becoming clear now. There were four hijacked planes: two that hit the World Trade Center, one that hit right next to the Pentagon, and one that crashed in Somerset County, PA. I’m still hearing reports of other hijackings come in, but none have been verified that I can tell. There’s a tape of a cellular phone call made to 911 from the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. The passenger had locked himself in a bathroom and knew that the plane was going down. The CTO of Akamai was on AA flight 11 out of Logan.

CNN is reporting life from Kabul, Afghanistan, where there are flames from some sort of missile or artillery attack. It’s unknown whether the attack was made by the United Statses or anti-Taliban forces involved in the civil war there.

Donald Rumsfeld just said in a press conference that the U.S. was not involved in the attacks on Kabul.

A friend sent an email chiding me for blaming this on the intelligence community, and he’s right, I have no way of knowing if or how the intelligence community failed in this instance. Certainly they have no way of knowing everything. I think that we’ll need to assess our intelligence gathering apperatus along with lots of other things, like airport security, and on-flight security in the aftermath of this awful incident.

Estimates of the fatalities are coming in. 800 people are missing at the Pentagon. Over 250 New York firefighters are assumed dead, including both the fire chief and deputy fire chief. Thousands of others are missing as well. There are reports on all the news channels of people calling out from under the rubble on cell phones, still alive and hoping to be rescued.