Three hijacked planes crashed into major U.S. landmarks on Tuesday, destroying both of New York‘s mighty twin towers, hitting the Pentagon in Washington and plunging the United States into unprecedented chaos and panic.

　　Three hijacked planes crashed into major U.S. landmarks on Tuesday, destroying both of New York‘s mighty twin towers, hitting the Pentagon in Washington and plunging the United States into unprecedented chaos and panic.

　　Loss of life was expected to be catastrophic from the collapse of the giant towers of the World Trade Center where many thousands of people work. The two enormous edifices both fell in a huge cloud of smoke and fire two hours after the initial impacts.

　　New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said there had been a ‘‘tremendous number of lives lost‘‘ in the attacks on his city.

　　Another plane crashed near Pittsburgh. It was not clear if this was another attempted hijacking.

　　Hospitals in New York were overwhelmed with patients as a massive cloud billowed into the blue skies over Manhattan where the city skyline had been dramatically and permanently altered.

　　``Hundreds of people are burned from head to toe,‘‘ said Dr. Steven Stern at St. Vincent‘s Hospital in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of lower Manhattan.

　　``The whole of lower Manhattan is coated in half an inch of dust,‘‘ Reuters reporter Daniel Sternoff said.

　　BUSH CUTS SHORT VISIT

　　President Bush cut short a visit to Florida and rushed back to Washington to face the greatest crisis of his young presidency.

　　He called the deliberate aerial assaults an ``apparent terrorist attack‘‘, and ordered a full-scale investigation. Early speculation about the source of the attack centered on Saudi-born guerrilla leader Osama Bin-Laden.