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Osama bin Laden was born into a wealthy family in 1957. He grew up in Saudi Arabia. He agreed that Muslims should rise up in a holy war and create a single Islamic state. He was known as an extremist.
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Osama bin Laden built al-Qaeda when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to focus on terrorist actions against groups they did not like. He ran his group like a company and trained his followers. He had a lot of financial support from his followers and family.
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When Iraq invaded Kuwait Osama bin Laden wants his men to defend Kuwait. He asks the royal family permission to use his terrorist actions to fight against Iraq. The royal family did not support his extremist views. They picked the U.S. to help defend them and that made Osama bin Laden more angry at the U.S.
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On February 26, 1993 the New York World Trade Center was bombed and found to be from al-Qaeda. A truck parked in the parking garage loaded with a bomb. When it exploded it killed 6 people and injured over 1,000.
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On the 8 year anniversary of the U.S. entered Saudi Arabia due to the invasion of Kuwait, al-Qaeda bombed the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. This bombing killed 224 people.
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On October 12, 2000 a small boat loaded with explosives ran into the U.S.S. Cole. This boat was an al-Qaeda boat and hit a naval destroyer off of Yemen. 17 sailors were killed and 38 were injured.
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On September 11, 2001 American Airline Flight 11 was hijacked by Mohammed Atta and other al-Qaeda members. At 8:46 am flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. It landed into floors 93-99 killing everyone on the flight and hundreds in the building. New York City and soon the rest of the Nation were devastated and confused. Many believed this was a mistake and a problem with that flight.
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United Airline flight 175 was hijacked and began heading toward New York. After the North Tower was hit, the South Tower did not evacuate because it was not known to be an attack. At 9:03 the plane crashed into floor 75-85 of the South Tower. This killed everyone on the plane and hundreds on those floors. This second attack is when the nation realized this was an attack.
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United Airline flight 77 was hijacked and some passengers start contacting family members to explain what was going on. At 9:37 flight 77 crashed into the west side of the Pentagon. This crashed killed 59 passengers and 125 people in the Pentagon.
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Flight 93 was hijacked in the air. After passengers contacted their families they began to form a plan to take back the plane and save more people. At 10:07 after fighting through some armed hijackers they were able to get the hijackers to crash the plane immediately. They landed in a field in Pennsylvania avoiding the original target but killing all 40 passengers inside. This flight was originally heading toward the Capital Building.
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After being struck by planes, the fires in the Twine Towers were melting the structure. At 9:59 the South Tower collapsed killing many people inside. 10:28 the North Building collapses after almost 2 hours since it was hit. When both towers collapsed it created a cloud that surrounded New York. Nobody expected the towers to collapse.
