Read Aloud the Text Content

This audio was created by Woord's Text to Speech service by content creators from all around the world.

Text Content or SSML code:

9/11 Terrorist Attacks On the morning of 11 September 2001, 19 Al Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial passenger planes in the United States. Two planes were flown into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, causing both towers to collapse. A third plane was crashed into the Pentagon, just outside Washington, DC. The fourth plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania after the crew and passengers attacked the terrorists on board, preventing it from hitting another target thought to be the White House. The attacks claimed nearly 3,000 lives and impacted many more globally. On 20 September, US President George W Bush declared a 'War on Terror' and stated that defeating terrorism was now the world’s fight. An invasion of Afghanistan was launched barely one month later, on 7 October 2001. American, British and Afghan United Front (Northern Alliance) forces were deployed to destroy al-Qaeda and remove the Taliban regime that had harboured the terrorist group in Afghanistan. The Taliban regime fell in November 2001. Following an international conference in in December, a new transitional Afghan government was formed. A UN-mandated multinational force, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was established to help secure Kabul and assist the new administration. ISAF was initially tasked with providing security in Kabul and after NATO took command in 2003, ISAF deployed more widely across Afghanistan. Troops became increasingly involved in intense combat operations against a Taliban insurgency until 2014.