This Is How Many People Died In The Pentagon Attack On 9/11

September 11, 2001, remains one of the worst days in American history. On that day, a group of terrorists split into teams and carried out separate but coordinated terrorist attacks that forever changed the direction of the country. Two planes hit and destroyed the twin towers of New York City's World Trade Center, reshaping the city's skyline in an instant. One plane was flown into the Pentagon. A fourth, believed to have been intended for the Capitol Building, was taken over by the passengers and flown into a Pennsylvania field instead. When the dust had settled, some 3,000 people — in the planes and on the ground — had been killed, according to History.

Two decades after the deadly acts of terrorism, the U.S. and the world are still dealing with the reverberations from the attacks. The U.S. recently pulled the last of its troops out of Afghanistan following a 20-year war begun in the wake of that day's events.

Of the 3,000 who died, the majority were in New York City, and were in or near the two towers or in the planes that crashed into them. Meanwhile, a smaller group perished in the Shanksville, Pennsylvania crash, as well as in the attack on the Pentagon. 

American Airlines Flight 77 took off that Tuesday morning from Washington's Dulles International Airport, bound for Los Angeles, according to the Pentagon Memorial website. About half an hour after taking off, likely when the craft was somewhere over Eastern Kentucky, five hijackers took over the aircraft and reversed its course, aiming it now at the Pentagon. At 9:37 a.m., the hijackers crashed the plane into their target. In just a fraction of a second, parts of the craft penetrated hundreds of feet into the building, according to the Washington Post.

"At first I thought I'd blown up the fax machine. Then I realized that it wasn't me. I smelled the jet fuel," said Louise Rogers, a civilian who was working that day.

When the dust had settled, nearly 200 people would be dead from the attacks on the Arlington, Virginia building. Those deaths included all five hijackers, according to History, the 59 passengers and crew aboard the flight, plus 125 people inside the building, both military personnel and civilians.