May 15, 2014

Standing before one of the foundational walls of the destroyed World Trade Center, President Barack Obama and other speakers today helped to officially dedicate the National September 11 Memorial Museum. The museum was built to honor the memory of those killed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the February 26, 1993, World Trade Center bombing. In his remarks, President Obama described the museum as a “sacred place of healing and hope” and insisted that “no act of terror can match the strength and character of our country.”

The September 11 terrorist attacks, also called 9/11, were the worst acts of terrorism ever carried out against the United States. The terrorists hijacked four commercial jetliners and crashed two of them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and one into the Pentagon Building near Washington, D.C. Hijackers crashed the fourth jet in a Pennsylvania field to prevent it from being reclaimed by passengers. The attacks killed about 3,000 people, including the 19 hijackers.

The museum lies seven stories below the ground-level National September 11 Memorial, which includes twin reflecting pools that lie in the footprints of the North and South towers. The walls of the new museum are lined with some 23,000 photos and images connected to the attacks. On display are 12,500 objects associated with the tragedy, including 2,380 objects donated by survivors, families of the dead, first responders, and others involved in the rescue efforts and the investigation and cleanup. Visitors can also listen to 1,995 oral histories and watch 580 hours of film and video. In addition, the museum incorporates remnants of structural columns that now mark the footprints of the original Twin Towers and sections of the retaining wall, known as the slurry wall, originally built to keep the Hudson River from flooding the World Trade Center site when it was first excavated. Earlier this week, about 14,000 unidentified or unclaimed remains from people killed on September 11 were moved to a repository adjacent to the museum.  The museum is “a collective story about how people can be good to one another in times of crisis,” curator Jan Ramirez told CNN. “We’ve put out our first draft of history.”

The National September 11 Memorial stands on the site of the former World Trade Center towers in New York City. Twin reflecting pools lie in the footprints of the two towers. Waterfalls cascade into the pools. The names of people who died in the attacks are inscribed on bronze panels surrounding each pool. (© Richard Levine, Alamy Images; AP Photo)

Additional World Book articles:

• Terrorism
• United States, History of the (September 11 terrorist attacks)
• Terrorism: America’s New Enemy (a Special Report)
• New York City (2001) (a Back in Time article)
• Washington, D.C. (2001) (a Back in Time article)

May 6, 2014

The leader of Nigeria’s Islamist militant group Boko Haram has threatened to sell into slavery more than 200 girls seized from their school on April 14. Yesterday, Abubakar Shekau released a video confirming that under his direction, Boko Haram militants had abducted the girls. On May 4, the group kidnapped an additional 8 girls, all between the ages of 12 and 15. The gunmen arrived in two trucks and seized the girls as well as farm animals and food from a village in the northeastern state of Borno, a stronghold of the Islamist movement.

The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama has condemned the kidnappings as an “outrage” and has offered the Nigerian government assistance in trying to find the girls. There is mounting domestic and international anger at the inability of the government of Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathon to protect Nigeria’s civilian population. An offensive ordered by Jonathan to find the girls did little but trigger reprisals against civilians.

Until recently, Boko Haram terrorist activities have been largely confined to northeast Nigeria. However, the Islamist militants in April carried out attacks in Abuja, the capital. (World Book map; map data © MapQuest.com, Inc.)

In its attempt to establish an Islamist state under Shari`ah law, Boko Haram has since 2009 killed tens of thousands of Nigerians, both Christian and Muslim. About half the people of Nigeria are Muslims–the majority of the population in the north. Nearly 40 percent of the people are Christians, who live mainly in southern and central parts of Nigeria.

On April 14, 2014, Boko Haram shocked the nation by carrying out a brazen terrorist attack in the capital, Abuja. It bombed a bus station during the morning rush hour, killing at least 70 people and wounding dozens of others. In February, it attacked a boys’ boarding school in troubled Yobe state and killed some 30 students. The attackers torched a locked dormitory, then brutally murdered the boys as they tried to escape the fire. Schools, particularly schools that teach Nigeria’s national curriculum, are frequent targets of Boko Haram, which roughly translates to “Western education is forbidden.”

Additional World Book articles:

• Nigeria 2009 (a Back in Time article)
• Nigeria 2010 (a Back in Time article)
• Nigeria 2011 (a Back in Time article)
• Nigeria 2012 (a Back in Time article)
• Nigeria 2013 (a Back in Time article)

December 30, 2013

A massive suicide-bomb explosion ripped through a packed trolleybus in Volgograd, Russia, this morning. The attack came less than 24 hours after a suicide bombing in the city’s main train station left 17 people dead. Today’s blast at the height of the morning rush hour killed 14 people and seriously injured some 20 others. Among the injured are a pregnant woman, two teenagers, and a six-month-old baby whose parents are assumed dead.

The twin attacks raise the specter that militant groups may be ramping up violence to mar the 2014 winter Olympic Games in the resort city of Sochi in February. The Olympics venue is close to Russia’s volatile north Caucasus region. Experts on the domestic situation in Russia have pointed out that it was highly risky to stage the games so near to the troubled republics of Chechnya and Dagestan. A leader of the Islamist insurgency in the two Caucasus republics, Doku Umarov, has called on his supporters to use “maximum force” to disrupt the “satanic” Olympic Games. Islamic separatists have carried many terrorist attacks in their attempt to establish Islamic states in the Caucasus region. Hundreds of people were killed, including many children, in attacks on a Moscow theater in 2002 and a school in the southern Russian town of Beslan in 2004.

In the Soviet Union, winter weather and the determination of the army and the people stopped the German advance at Stalingrad (now Volgograd) during World War II. (AP/Wide World)

The experts also suggest that the terrorists chose Volgograd for a reason. The city, which is about 560 miles (900 kilometers) south of Moscow and 435 miles (700 kilometers) northeast of Sochi, is of huge symbolic importance to most Russians. Volgograd (then the Soviet city of Stalingrad) was the scene of one of the most strategically important battles of  World War II (1939-1945). The Battle of Stalingrad, which lasted from Aug. 23, 1942, until Feb. 2, 1943, was the first time in the war that an attacking German army, which many believed invincible, was forced to turn back.

Additional World Book articles:

• World War II (1942) (a Back in Time article)
• Europe (1943) (a Back in Time article)
• Russia (1994) (a Back in Time article)
• Russia (2002) (a Back in Time article)
• Russia (2003) (a Back in Time article)
• Russia (2004) (a Back in Time article)

September 23, 2013

Kenyan security forces continue an assault launched yesterday on the Westgate shopping complex in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, in an attempt to end a two-day siege by terrorists. More than 1,000 people were inside the mall, Nairobi’s most up-scale shopping complex, when the terrorists stormed it on Saturday, slaughtering dozens of civilians and taking hostages. At least 62 people are known to have died in the attack, and more than 170 others were injured. A Kenyan army spokesperson has announced that security forces have secured much of the shopping center and that only a small number of hostages is believed to remain under the militants’ control. However, the militants are armed with military-grade weaponry and, according to security experts, seem determined to fight to the death.

The Islamist al-Shabab movement has claimed it carried out the attack in retaliation for Kenyan military operations in Somalia. The group, which has killed countless civilians with suicide bombs, has repeatedly threatened attacks in Kenya if the Kenyan government did not pull its troops out of Somalia. There are currently about 4,000 Kenyan troops there as part of an African Union peacekeeping force.

Nairobi, a city of more than 3 million people, is one of Africa's largest and most cosmopolitan cities. It is a center for banking, trade, and other commercial activities. (© Images of Africa Photobank/Alamy Images)

Al-Shabab (Arabic for “youths”) has been active in Somalia since the early 2000′s. It is intent on establishing an Islamic state there under Shar’iah law. Al-Shabab has at various times controlled large sections of southern and central Somalia. In early 2012, Western-backed African Union peacekeeping forces pushed al-Shabab out of the Somali capital, Mogadishu. Despite being forced out of the capital, al-Shabab remains in control of smaller towns and large swathes of the countryside.

Terrorism experts believe that al-Shabab has links to the al-Qa’ida cell in Yemen, the Islamic Maghreb terrorist organization in Mali, and the Islamist Boko Haram terrorist group in Nigeria.

The expensive shops and restaurants at Nairobi’s Westgate Mall attracted wealthy Kenyans and expatriates alike. Among the dead were people from Canada, China, France, Ghana, India, and the United Kingdom.

Additional World Book articles:

• Islam 2012 (a Back in Time article)
• Kenya 2011 (a Back in Time article)
• Kenya 2012 (a Back in Time article)
• Nigeria 2012 (a Back in Time article)
• Terrorism 2008 (a Back in Time article)

August 6, 2013

The U.S. Department of State today told American citizens and non-emergency government staff to leave Yemen “immediately.” The U.S. Air Force has confirmed that it is flying embassy staff out of Sanaa, the Yemeni capital. In London, the British Foreign Office has ordered its embassy staff withdrawn from Yemen and issued a travel advisory. Interpol, the international policing organization, has issued a separate global security alert, noting that “hundreds of terrorists” have in the past month been freed in prison breaks in Iraq, Libya, and Pakistan.

U.S. government officials confirmed yesterday that electronic communications were  intercepted in which al-Qa’ida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri ordered the head of the al-Qa’ida affiliate in Yemen to carry out a major attack. Zawahiri succeeded Osama bin Laden as the head of al-Qa’ida.

In Sanaa, hundreds of armored vehicles surround the presidential palace, military headquarters, and Western embassies. According to a BBC security source, Yemeni intelligence services have disclosed that dozens of al-Qa’ida militants are known to have entered Sanaa in recent days, presumably to carry out of a major attack on Western embassies and Yemen’s military headquarters.

Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, is enclosed by a wall. Traffic enters and leaves through one of eight gates. (A. Tessore, Shostal)

On August 2, the State Department closed a number of embassies and consulates in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. The closing were in response to an al-Qa’ida threat “emanating from the Arabian Peninsula.” The State Department also ordered a worldwide travel alert for the entire month of August, particularly significant in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.

Additional World Book articles:

• Diplomacy
• September 11 terrorist attacks
• The Middle East: From Fall to Spring (a special report)

May 10, 2013

The installation of the silver spire topping One World Trade Center was completed today, bringing the structure to the height of 1,776 feet, a reference to the year of America’s declaration of independence from Great Britain, 1776. The skyscraper stands at the site of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Below the new tower is a memorial to the nearly 3,000 people killed in multiple attacks by al-Qa’ida militants. The original Trade Center’s twin towers collapsed after hijacked passenger jets were crashed into them.

When the interior of new Trade Center is finished, the skyscraper will house 2.6 million square feet (242,000 square meters) of commercial office space, plus observation decks, restaurants and other public facilities. The 408-foot- (1,241-meter-) high spire will function as a broadcast antenna for the region’s media outlets.

Additional World Book Articles

• New York City 2001 (a Back in Time article)
• Sky-High Tech (a special report)
• Terrorism: America’s New Enemy (a special report)

April 25, 2013

More than 10,000 people, including many uniformed police and military personnel, attended a campus memorial yesterday for Sean A. Collier, a police officer for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology allegedly killed by suspects in the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings. One of the speakers at the service was United States Vice President Joe Biden. Three people died when two bombs exploded within seconds of each other near the finish line of the marathon. At least 260 people were injured, some critically. Also on Wednesday, Copley Square, the site of the attacks, was reopened to residents and business people. Boston officials had closed the square and surrounding area while investigators searched for evidence related to the attack.

Nineteen-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the suspects in the bombings, remains hospitalized as he recuperates from wounds suffered in a shootout with police in the early morning hours of April 19.  His brother and fellow suspect, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed in the shootout, which followed a wild police case and Collier’s murder. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured in Watertown later that day. On April 22, he was charged by the U. S. attorney’s office for the district of Massachusetts with conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction against persons and property, resulting in death.

January 21, 2013

On January 19, Algerian forces launched a final assault on the BP (British Petroleum) natural gas field in the Sahara Desert seized by Islamist terrorists on January 16. According to the Algerian government, the assault was made after officers received a report that the hostage-takers were killing their captives. In all, 37 foreign workers died during the four-day hostage crisis, including 9 Japanese, 6 Filipinos, 3 Britons, and 3 Americans; 32 of the militants were killed, and 3 were captured alive. A number of the hostages remain unaccounted for.

The Algerian government staged an initial military assault on the plant on January 17, during which helicopter gunships bombed four trucks carrying both terrorists and captives. BP officials in London simultaneously announced that hundreds of workers from international oil companies were being evacuated from Algeria.

The Islamists initially took some 130 people of 9 nationalities hostage. The group that claimed responsibility for the attack, Al Mulathameen, issued a statement to Mauritanian news outlets that foreign citizens were explicitly targeted. The terrorists claimed the attack was made in retaliation for French intervention against the militant Islamist group al-Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in neighboring Mali. (The Maghreb refers to all of northwest Africa west of Egypt.) The Algerian government disputes this claim, stating that the attacks had been planned weeks before France first deployed troops in Mali on January 12. (French troops are fighting alongside Malian soldiers, attempting to push back AQIM fighters bent on seizing the entire country.)

Algeria is a major producer of petroleum and natural gas. (AP/Wide World)

At the core of the Islamist insurgency in the region are the remnants of a now-defunct Algerian rebel group that was largely driven out of Algeria and into the unpoliced desert land in northern Mali sometime after the Algerian civil war was settled in 1999. AQIM, a loose alliance of Algerian and Mauritanian fighters, aims to overthrow the Algerian government and establish an Islamic state under Shar’iah law. The group operates in Algeria, Mauritania, Niger, and other ungoverned areas of the Sahel region. The insurgents are known for their extreme cruelty and barbarity.

Additional World Book articles:

• Algeria 1991 (a Back in Time article)
• Algeria 1992 (a Back in Time article)
• Algeria 1999 (a Back in Time article)

September 11, 2012

The 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks was observed today in New York City; Arlington, Virginia; and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. In New York, relatives of the victims of the World Trade Center attacks read out the names of the dead. Governor Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, and former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani attended the observance but did not speak.

In Arlington, President Barack Obama addressed survivors and relatives of the 184 people killed at the Pentagon, the U.S. Department of Defense headquarters. He declared that their loved ones would never be forgotten and that the dead had “helped us make the America we are today.”

Vice-President Joe Biden was the principal speaker at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville. In remembrance of the dead, President Obama and Vice-President Biden and their Republican challengers, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, set aside campaigning for the day.

The World Trade Center towers billowed flames and smoke on Sept. 11, 2001, after terrorists crashed hijacked airliners into the two buildings. (AP/Wide World)

Nearly 3,000 people were killed on Sept. 11, 2001, in attacks by members of al-Qa`ida, the Afghanistan-based terrorist organization headed by Osama bin Laden. After hijacking four commercial airliners, the terrorists flew two jets into the Trade Center twin towers, which subsequently collapsed. Terrorists crashed a third airliner into the Pentagon. The attackers in the fourth airliner were overtaken by passengers, preventing them from crashing the plane into another Washington, D.C., landmark, possibly the White House or Capitol. The jet went down in an open field near Shanksville, killing all aboard. The September 11 terrorist attacks prompted the administration of President George W. Bush to send forces into Afghanistan in October 2001 to clean out terrorist camps. That war continues in 2012.

Additional World Book articles:

• Afghanistan War
• National September 11 Memorial and Museum
• Afghanistan 2001 (a Back in Time article)
• New York City 2001 (a Back in Time article)
• Washington, D.C. 2001 (a Back in Time article)
• Terrorism: America’s New Enemy (a special report)
• Passport to Reform: The INS and Homeland Security (a special report)

May 1, 2012

Although not yet topped out, the new One World Trade Center yesterday surpassed the height of the Empire State Building as New York City’s tallest building. One World Trade Center is currently under construction on the site of the original World Trade Center, the twin towers destroyed in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Yesterday’s work on the structure brought the unfinished frame of the building to a little more than 1,250 feet high (381 meters), the level of the Empire State Building’s highest observation deck.

The Empire State Building (© iStockphoto)

When complete, One World Trade Center will be topped by a 408-foot (124-meter), cable-stayed spire, making it 1,776 feet (541 meters) tall, the tallest building in the United States. The current highest building in United States is the Willis Tower in Chicago. Formerly named the Sears Tower, the building is 110 stories, reaching 1,450 feet (442 meters) high. The north tower of the original World Trade Center was 1,368 feet (417 meters) in height.

Additional World Book articles:

• Architecture
• Skyscraper
• Terrorism: America’s New Enemy (a special report)