(The Center Square) – The U.S. was no stranger to terror attacks before Sept. 11, 2001, both at home and abroad, but none shaped America and the world quite like the attacks on 9/11, which occurred 25 years ago Friday.
The Sept 11 attacks – in which 19 Islamic terrorists hiijacked four U.S. commercial planes, crashing them into both twin towers in New York City, the Pentagon and a Shanksville, Pennsylvania, field after passengers overtook the hijackers – caused the deaths of 2,996 people, including the terrorists.
Between the 1960s and 1970s, a leftist group, the Weather Underground, terrorized the U.S. government agencies, claiming credit for 25 bombings, including explosions at the U.S. State Department, U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, the California Attorney General’s office and a New York City police station. No innocent people were killed in the attacks, while three of their members were killed in an accidental explosion in a New York City townhouse in 1970.
The 1980s saw a major uptick in Islamic-inspired terror attacks targeting Americans overseas, setting their sights on air travel, especially.
During the Lebanese Civil War, Hezbollah, a terror proxy of Iran, was responsible for the April 18, 1983, bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 63 people and injuring 120.
The same year, the Marine Barracks in Beirut was attacked on Oct. 23, killing 242 and injuring 60 Americans. Up until the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Marine Barracks bombing stood as the deadliest terror attack against the U.S., and the deadliest single-death toll for the Marine Corps since Iwo Jima during World War II in 1945.
A TWA flight flying from Rome to Athens was hijacked by two Hezbollah terrorists on June 14, 1985. One American hostage, a U.S. Navy sailor, Second Class Petty Officer Robert Stethem, was murdered.
A few years later, on April 14, 1988, a car-bomb exploded outside a USO club in Naples, Italy, killing one U.S. sailor, Third Class Petty Officer Angela Simone Santos, and injuring four other American sailors. The group, Jihad Brigades, claimed responsibility for the attack, according to the U.S. Department of State.
Later that year, on Dec. 21, a Pan American Airlines flight en route to New York City from London was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 190 Americans, with a total of 259 passengers on board and 11 on the ground. The Libyan government accepted responsibility for the bombing, according to the FBI.
On Feb. 26, 1993, a car bomb exploded in an underground garage of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing six people and injuring 1,000 – the attack was carried out by Islamic terrorists led by Ramzi Yousef.
On April 19, 1995, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Okla., was destroyed when a moving truck, laced with explosives, blew up, killing 168 people, including 19 children, and injuring over 600. The attack carried out by American Timothy McVeigh, with the assistance of Terry Nichols, marked the worst act of homegrown terrorism in history.
The following year marked another deadly one for terrorism. On June 25, 1996, a truck bomb exploded outside the U.S. military’s Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The attack killed 19 U.S. service members, injuring 240 Americans. Investigators have pinned the attack on a Saudi branch of Hezbollah.
During the 1996 Summer Olympics hosted in Atlanta, Ga., on July 27, a bomb planted in Centennial Olympic Park exploded, killing one woman and injuring over 100 people. Over the next two years, bombs were planted outside two abortion clinics, one in Sandy Springs, Ga., and the other in Birmingham, Ala., in 1998, killing an off-duty Birmingham police officer, Robert Sanderson, and injuring one nurse. Eric Rudolph, an American, was ultimately found guilty of those attacks.
On Aug.7, 1998, a pair of explosions rocked two U.S. embassies in East Africa. The U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, was targeted by a bomb, killing 12 American citizens and injuring six. The attack itself killed 32 foreign service nationals and 247 Kenyans, while injuring 13 FSNs and approximately 5,000 Kenyans.
At the same time, an explosion rocked the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing seven FSNs, three Tanzanians, injuring one American, and injuring 76 Tanzanians. The U.S. government found Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda responsible for the dual attacks.
Less than a year before the Sept. 11 attacks, on Oct. 12, 2000, the USS Cole, a Navy destroyer, was attacked when two suicide bombers pulled alongside the ship as it was refueling at a port in Aden, Yemen. The terrorist detonated the explosives, killing 17 American sailors and injuring nearly 40 crew members. Al-Qaeda was found responsible for the attack.
While the U.S. was no stranger to terror attacks before Sept. 11, 2001, the tragic events of that day shaped the overall political, security and cultural landscape of the U.S. more than two decades after the attacks.
