These aerial images of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, were released by ABC News on Wednesday, showing the attacks from new angles. They were taken by the New York City Police Department. Here, smoke billows from one of the towers after being hit by an airliner as part of a coordinated terrorist attack.
The upper floors of one of the towers burns after the attack. A total of four jets were hijacked by Islamic terrorists on Sept. 11. The al-Qaida-affiliated hijackers slammed two of those jets --- American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 -- into the Twin Towers that morning. Some 2,975 people died in the attacks.
The towers collapsed as huge fires caused by the impact of the plane crashes spread. About 2,600 people were killed in New York alone.
Both towers collapsed within two hours of the attacks, which began at 8:46 a.m., bringing down nearby buildings with them.
The towers collapsed as people inside them tried to escape. Some plunged to their deaths by jumping out windows before the buildings fell.
Smoke and ash from the skyscrapers engulfed lower Manhattan.
There were two other attack sites on 9/11. One airliner was flown into the Pentagon, killing 125 people. And the fourth plane to crash that day went down in a field in Shanksville, Pa. The official 9/11 Commission report said the hijackers crashed the plane as passengers tried to seize control. Here, smoke fills lower Manhattan after the towers collapsed.
ABC News obtained these images after filing a Freedom of Information Act request last year with the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The NIST collected them as part of an investigation into the collapse of the towers. (Sources: AP, ABC News)
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