At 8:46 am (1:46 pm in the UK) on Tuesday, 11th September, 2001 American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the north face of the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City.
2,996 people died, including the 19 hijackers of the planes. 67 of these were British nationals. In total, 20 countries mourned the loss of citizens that day.
Since 9/11, more than a hundred thousand military and civilians have died as a result of military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The scale of death inflicted is vast, incomprehensible. It is not, though, the numbers that tell the real story.
It is the memory of the planes piercing the bright blue city skyline, excoceting their targets: their “glint was the worldflash of a coming future,” said Martin Amis.
It is the memory of the realisation that none of us knew what would happen next, that the world could be propelled to the brink in the blinking of an eye.
Most of all it is the memory of human tragedy.
Yes, the world changed. Our complacent assumptions were turned upside down. But it is the individuals and families whose lives were ripped apart we remember today.
Most of us simply observed 9/11 with awestruck horror. They had to live it, that day and every day since.
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One Comment
The 9/11 attacks in New York were terrible, and, in absolute numbers, on a scale rarely seen outside full-scale war. The impact on the USA and the enduring images of planes flying into towers, and collapsing towers gave them enormous impact. This has resulted in great political effect.
We should also remember that smaller places have experienced larger relative population loss in terrorist actions.
The 9/11attack in New York killed 1 in 2600 of the population. The 1987 Enniskillen bomb killed 12 (11 that day and 1 who lingered unconscious until 2000) or 1 in 1080. The 29 killed in the 1998 Omagh bomb were 1in 655 of the town’s population.
We must remember all the victims of terrorism – the dead and the wounded, the grieving and the trautmatised.