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It is exactly 20 years since the September 11 attacks. These were a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda against US on Tuesday, September 11 2001. 4 commercial airliners traveling to California were hijacked mid-flight by terrorists. The hijackers were organized into three groups of five hijackers and one group of four. Each group had one hijacker who had received flight training and took over control of the aircraft. Their explicit goal was to crash each plane into a prominent American building, causing mass casualties and partial or complete destruction of the targeted buildings. The first plane was flown into the North Tower of the World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan at 8:46 am. Seventeen minutes later at 9:03 am, the World Trade Center's South Tower was hit by another Flight. Both 110-story towers collapsed within an hour and forty-two minutes, leading to the collapse of the other World Trade Center structures and significantly damaging surrounding buildings. A third flight crashed into the west side of the Pentagon causing a partial collapse of the building's side. The fourth flight was flown in the direction of Washington, D.C. The plane's passengers attempted to regain control of the aircraft away from the hijackers and ultimately diverted the flight from its intended target; it crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania at 10:03 am. Investigators determined that Flight's target was either the White House or the U.S. Capitol. Nearly 3000 people died in the attacks.