Thirteen Years

On this day 13 years ago, Islamic terrorists attacked the World Trade Center. Six people were killed. More than 1,000 were injured. The bomb went off at 12:18PM.

It took some people more than 2 hours to evacuate the towers. The emergency stairwells were pitch black, and the air was thick with smoke.

The six people who were murdered in the first major Islamic terrorist attack on US soil were:
John DiGiovanni, Valley Stream, New York
Robert Kirkpatrick, Suffern, New York
Steve Knapp, Manhattan, New York City
Monica Smith, Seaford, New York
William Macko, Bayonne, New Jersey
Wilfredo Mercado, Brooklyn, New York City

The terrorists had sought to do more than just damage the towers. They wanted to make an emphatic and deadly statement:

Yousef was assisted by Iraqi bomb maker Abdul Rahman Yasin. Yasin's complex 1300 lb (600 kg) bomb was made of urea pellets, nitroglycerin, sulfuric acid, aluminum azide, magnesium azide, and bottled hydrogen. He added sodium cyanide to the mix as the vapors could go through the ventilation shafts and elevators of the towers. The van that Yousef used had four 20 ft (6 m) long fuses, all covered in surgical tubing. Yasin calculated that the fuse would trigger the bomb in twelve minutes after he would use a cheap cigarette lighter to light the fuse.

Yousef wanted to prevent smoke from escaping the towers, therefore catching the public eye by smothering people inside. He foresaw Tower One collapsing onto Tower Two after the blast would occur. The materials to build the bomb cost some US$300.

UPDATE:
Posted to Basil's Blog, Wizbang's Carnival of Trackbacks, and Stop the ACLU.

UPDATE:
Also covering this somber anniversary: Wizbang, The Counterterror Blog, and Below the Beltway.

Technorati: World Trade Center, WTC, bombing.