Was September 11 the deadliest terrorist attack in history?
Yes. Before September 11, the deadliest attacks were the bombings of airplanes, such as Pan Am flight 103, destroyed over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 by terrorists linked to Libya, or the 1985 bombing of an Air India jet. Each of these attacks killed more than 300 people. The August 1998 bombings of the U. S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania-before September 11, the largest attacks on major buildings-killed 224 people; these attacks have been linked to al-Qaeda. By way of comparison, Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people by bombing a federal office building in Oklahoma City in 1995. The failed February 1993 attempt by Islamist terrorists to destroy the World Trade Center killed six people and injured about 1,000 others. In addition, the 1983 Islamist suicide bombing of the U.S. marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, killed 242 Americans. Was September 11 part of an increasingly deadly trend in the evolution of terrorism? Yes. During the 1990 s, there were fewer terrorist attacks, but they ten
