Investigators early yesterday sifted through debris of a hijacked United Airlines jetliner possibly targeting Washington that crashed near this western Pennsylvania town, killing all 45 people aboard, officials said.
United Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757 carrying 38 passengers, five flight attendants, and two pilots, went down at 10:06am Tuesday in a wooded area 105km southeast of Pittsburgh, two hours after it took off from Newark, New Jersey, bound for San Francisco.
The plane was one of four airliners commandeered by air pirates in a deadly terrorist operation that also targeted the Word Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.
Some reports said investigators believed the pirates who hijacked United Flight 93 were trying to crash into either Camp David -- the presidential retreat in Maryland, located 135km from the crash site -- or the Capitol Building, the seat of the US Congress, in Washington.
Local media reports said at least two passengers had telephoned from the plane.
"We are being hijacked! We are being hijacked," one man yelled as he phoned 911 dispatchers.
A California man identified as Tom Burnett reportedly called his wife and told her that somebody aboard the plane had been stabbed.
"We're all going to die, but three of us are going to do something," he told her. "I love you honey."
"There's not a lot to see, small debris, a crater with a lot of little debris," said a state police spokesman Frank Morgan. All 45 people aboard the jetliner were presumed dead.
"It was two miles away, but it shook everything," said Bruce Grine, a Shanksville resident. "It shook the windows. We saw smoke, then the smell. Then somebody came running up the street and said a plane crashed."
Pennsylvania state police officials, who have cordoned off the crash site, were assisting the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration in the investigation.
"United Airlines has confirmed one of its flights has crashed near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. United Flight 93, a Boeing 757 aircraft, is the flight number involved," the airline earlier said in a statement.
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