The Associated Press Rescue workers and vehicles are
deployed near the site of the World Trade Center in New York,
Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2001. In the most devastating terrorist
onslaught ever waged against the United States, knife-wielding
hijackers crashed two airliners into the World Trade Center on
Tuesday, toppling its twin 110-story towers.
By Rachel Makabi and Linh
Tat
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
In the aftermath of the most atrocious terrorist attack in U.S.
history, rescue teams pulled bodies out from under the rubble of
what was New York’s World Trade Center.
The final death toll is still expected be in the thousands. New
York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani confirmed Wednesday that the city has
ordered 6,000 body bags.
As of 9:30 p.m. CNN reported the death toll at the Pentagon to
be around 200, including 64 people who were on American Airlines
Flight 77. Earlier in the day President Bush toured the disaster
area there and praised rescue workers’ efforts.
UCLA Chancellor Albert Carnesale, in a statement released today,
said the campus would remain open throughout the ordeal but urged
campus managers to give employees maximum flexibility as they cope
with Tuesday’s events.
Carnesale asked the entire campus community to gather at a
memorial service Thursday at 2 p.m. in front of Royce Hall.
The presidents of both the Undergraduate Students Association
Council and the Graduate Students Association emphasized the need
for tolerance.
“We really need to keep an eye on (religious intolerance)
so it doesn’t escalate here,” GSA President Charles
Harless said. “It’s time we work toward
healing.”
Students from various campus organizations also said another
service will be held Sunday in downtown Los Angeles.
As the nation continued to count its losses, Federal Bureau of
Investigation employees embarked on a heated pursuit of
suspects.
The search took FBI agents to the Canadian border, where
suspected hijackers may have entered the United States, and to
Florida, where officials believe other suspects learned to fly
commercial jetliners.
“The Department of Justice has undertaken perhaps the most
massive and intensive investigation ever conducted in this
country,” said Attorney General John Ashcroft.
About 4,000 special agents and 3,000 support personnel are
involved in the investigation, and 400 FBI laboratory specialists
were at the crime scenes today.
Federal authorities have linked more than one dozen hijackers to
either prime suspect Osama bin Laden or other terrorist
organizations, officials said.
Earlier today, an armed FBI team stormed the Westin Hotel in
Boston and carried off one person. FBI head Robert Mueller said no
arrests have been made.
In Providence, R.I., authorities ordered passengers off an
Amtrak train from Boston and escorted one man in handcuffs down
from the train. Though Providence police chief Col. Richard
Sullivan later said the man did not appear to be a suspect, he was
detained by police.
Officials also discovered an Arabic flight manual while
searching a car at the Boston airport.
Charlie Voss, a former employee at Huffman Aviation in Venice,
Fla., said FBI agents told him that Mohamed Atta, one of the two
men who stayed in his home while training at a local flight school,
was a suspect. The second man has been identified as Marwan
Alshehhi.
As senior U.S. officials continued to implicate Saudi exile
Osama bin-Laden as the prime suspect in Tuesday’s terrorist
attacks, some began discriminating against Muslims and Middle
Easterners closer to home.
Mahmoud Abdel-Baset, director of religious and social services
of the Islamic Center of Southern California, said the center
received several calls with vulgar remarks.
“Everyone has a prejudice and there are ignorant people in
any society,” Abdel-Baset said. “But with every obscene
call that we receive, we receive calls that people do understand
and try to show compassion and support.”
Abdel-Baset said this type of support became apparent Tuesday in
a solidarity rally in which 150-200 people from many religions
united to pray for the victims and their families.
He said those ostracizing the Muslim and Middle Eastern
communities do not understand the differences of opinion within the
communities.
Quoting a passage from the Koran that states that “whoever
wasted a soul for no just cause is as if he wasted all
humanity,” Abdel-Baset said Tuesday’s attacks were
contrary to Islamic teaching.
“It is shocking and horrifying that there are people who
can do this and still call themselves human beings ““ let
alone connect themselves to any faith,” Abdel-Baset said.
“I know there are people congratulating each other about
what happened but they are the sick among us,” he
continued.
He added that many people at the rally observed that though they
were praying out of different prayer books, the actual prayers they
recited were similar.
With reports from The Associated Press.