The 9/11 Attacks: 10 Years Later

This coming Sunday, the whole world will be commemorating the 10th anniversary of the September 11 Attacks in New York City, the worst terrorist attack in history, which killed over 2,000 people in a series of plane hijackings which resulted in two of them crashing into the World Trade Center in New York, one crashing into The Pentagon, and another one crashing into an empty field in Pennsylvania. The world watched in horror as the planes hit the twin towers which both eventually collapsed. People around the world watched everything on television--from the first few minutes after the first plane hit, until the moment the second plane hit, until the moment both towers collapsed. Television audiences worldwide watched as the dreams of over 2,000 people were shattered in an instant.

Television cameras captured the moment as the second plane hit.

I was barely 9 years old when these attacks happened. I first heard of the attacks when I woke up early before sunrise that day, and I remember hearing my dad telling my mom about it. The way he narrated the events made it seem like he was just narrating what had happened in a movie that he had seen. It seemed so unreal, but it was all too true. People were talking about it at school and when I turned on the television when I got home, the foreign news channels were showing images of the twin towers on fire, as well as the images of one portion of The Pentagon that had collapsed, and the crash site of United flight 93 in Pennsylvania. The screams and sobs of the people caught on camera as they watched the second plane hit was certainly chilling and unforgettable.

Just like all the other anniversaries of the attacks, people will be commemorating the event, though I think this year's commemorations (I refuse to use the term "celebrating" since I don't think it's appropriate) would be of a different scale than the previous ones since it is the 10th anniversary, after all. It is also the first time that everyone would mark this event with the man behind all these attacks actually dead, since, as we all know, Osama Bin Laden was killed in an operation by the U.S. Forces in May 2011 in Pakistan. Bin Laden may be dead but, however, the war on terrorism continues. People are still getting killed in bombing incidents to this day, and there still seems to be no end to all this. 

There are a lot of images and videos of the attacks, but the most chilling would have to be the one below, where we hear a voice recording of a man's phone conversation with a 911 operator. The man in upper floor level of one of the towers, and we are actually listening to the final moments before one of the towers collapsed. At the end of the video, we actually hear the man screaming as his surroundings begin to rumble, indicating the start of the collapse. The 911 operator loses contact with the man, and after that, it's just total silence. It's a very spine-tingling video, indeed.