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A Day Of Prayer
Day of Remembrance for Americans
(AP) - Chapel doors of the First Baptist Church in Richmond, Va., opened for prayers and solace as dawn broke Friday on a national day of remembrance for the victims of the terrorist attacks. "We will pray for our city, we will pray for our nation and we will pray for all the people whose lives have been lost," the Rev. Peter Jamer Flamming said.
Wounded nation braces for war
Bush says 'global strike force' will hit back as death toll is put at 5,000
The worldwide manhunt for those responsible for Tuesday's terrorist onslaught against America intensified as the US and its allies prepared for a massive and sustained military campaign to eradicate the threat.
The US Deputy Defence Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, made it clear Washington was not thinking of a one-off strike, however large. "This will unfold over time, and we're going to keep after these people and the people who support them until they stop," he said. "You don't do this with a single strike."
Officials said every option was on the table, including the use of B-2 stealth bombers cruise missiles, and the dispatch of élite special service ground forces. US fighter jets were positioned over the country's most important cities to guard against any repeat attack.
Congress and President George Bush agreed on an initial emergency spending package of $20bn (£14bn) just "a downpayment" on what was needed, said Tom Daschle, the Democratic leader of the Senate.
Earlier, the Federal Reserve pumped in $50bn to help the US and global financial systems, whose destabilisation risks turning the economic slowdown into recession.
The number of British fatalities could climb into the "middle hundreds", the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, said as the first of several British victims from the World Trade Centre were identified.
The death toll in New York and Washington is now expected to be about 5,000, less than feared at one point, but still far and away the deadliest single terrorist outrage in modern history. And yesterday brought with it a bitter disappointment. As rescuers clawed through wreckage in the search for survivors, a tiny miracle had briefly lifted the gloom, as two firemen were reportedly found alive in the rubble of the World Trade Centre. But they had been there for only a few hours.
After two days of trauma and shock, a veneer of normality started to return to national life, with the partial reopening of US airports, operating under tight new security restrictions. US marshals and anti-terrorist personnel were being drafted into service and the Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he was considering calling up thousands of members of the military reserves to help maintain national security in what would be the first draft of reservists since the Gulf War a decade ago. Everyone was on edge. The Capitol building, which houses the US Congress, was evacuated after a bomb scare, and Vice-President Dick Cheney was moved to the presidential retreat at Camp David in what was described "a purely precautionary measure". He will rejoin President Bush in Washington over the weekend.
Wall Street will not reopen until Monday, and signs were multiplying across the country of a further decline in economic activity, because of the paralysing effects of the attacks on transport and financial markets. Virtually all main sport has been called off until next week.
In Washington, the Justice Department revealed that some 50 people were probably involved in the quadruple hijackings that started Tuesday's events. John Ashcroft, the Attorney General, said at least 18 people carried out the operation, four on two of the planes and five apiece on the other two.
The FBI, which is working on thousands of leads, claims to know the identity of most of the 18 hijackers. At least seven people have been detained in America and one in Germany, in connection with what Mr Ashcroft called a "well-financed operation". Airports in New York were shut again shortly after the resumption of flights last night when FBI agents arrested a man posing as a pilot and detained up to six others, some of them Arab nationals. At Heathrow, police arrested a man in his mid 40s under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.
In the US, attention was focused on the crash of UA 93 near Pittsburgh, presumed to be heading for a target in Washington, perhaps the White House, before it came down. Last night, investigators recovered the Boeing 757's "black box" flight recorder, which could provide the biggest clue yet to what precisely happened on one of the four doomed flights. An FBI spokesman did not rule out that the aircraft might have been shot down by an American warplane to prevent a repeat of the calamity at the World Trade Centre, which happened almost an hour before UA 93 crashed.
President Bush vowed a relentless campaign to exterminate terrorism. Speaking from the Oval Office, his voice sometimes halting and with tears in his eyes, he said he saw opportunity through the sadness. "This nation is sad, but we are also tough and resolute, and now is an opportunity to do future generations a favour by coming together and whipping terrorism, hunting it down, finding it, and holding them accountable," he declared.
The President continued his drive to build a worldwide coalition and "global strike force" against terrorism. After talks on Wednesday with European, Russian and Chinese leaders, Mr Bush also spoke to his counterparts in Japan and Italy. But whether the coalition would be a diplomatic one with the US acting militarily on its own, or a genuinely multilateral operation as in the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq, was not clear.
The fiercest US pressure in the diplomatic manoeuvring was on Pakistan, the country with the closest links to the fundamentalist Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which is believed to be sheltering the Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect for the attacks.The US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, had a "positive" talk with Pakistan's President, General Pervez Musharraf, insisting Islamabad must help tighten the screws on Afghanistan, or face the consequences.
On Capitol Hill, Congress indicated it would give Mr Bush whatever endorsement and authority he needed to respond to the "act of war" against the United States. This will help clear the decks for Mr Bush to act when and how he chooses. According to a poll, 83 per cent of the public back "forceful military action" against those responsible, even if that entails more terrorist retaliation.
In a televised link from the Oval Office with the New York Mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, and the state Governor, George Pataki, Mr Bush said he would visit the city today, which he
declared a day of "prayer and remembrance". Mr Giuliani said 4,763 people were missing from the World Trade Centre's twin towers, although the total of recovered bodies is only 94.
An increasing worry is of reprisals against the Arab American community. Mr Bush made a plea for tolerance and for Americans to resist the urge to brand an entire religion for the crimes of a few. "We must be mindful that, as we seek to win the war, we treat Arab Americans and Muslims with the respect they deserve," he said.
Parliament has been recalled for an emergency debate today, the first test for Iain Duncan Smith, who was confirmed yesterday as the new leader of the Conservative Party.
* A three-minute silence will be observed in Britain at 11am today. It will be followed by a memorial service at St Paul's cathedral, starting at noon.