NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vowing to strike with a hammer of vengeance, the United States hunted on Wednesday for those behind the deadly attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Investigators hunting for those behind the worst attack on the United States since the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor cast a wide net -- although increasingly focused on bin Laden, who is blamed for bombing two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998 and other anti-American attacks.
A Pakistani newspaper quoted bin Laden as denying blame. ''The terrorist act is the action of some American group. I have nothing to do with it,'' it quoted him as saying.
Attorney General John Ashcroft said each plane was hijacked by between three and six people who used knives and box cutters, plus the threat of bombs, to commandeer the aircraft. FBI Director Robert Mueller said officials believed they had identified most of the hijackers.
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Texas Republican, told reporters after an intelligence briefing that authorities in Boston had recovered a flight manual in Arabic from a bag that was believed to have belonged to one of the hijackers. (Read photo caption below)
Heavily armed federal agents and police searched two hotels in the Boston area, where officials reportedly identified five Arab men as suspects and seized a rental car at the city's airport containing Arabic-language materials.
Investigators found a copy of the Koran, a videotape on how to fly commercial jets and a fuel consumption calculator in a pair of bags meant for American Airlines Flight 11, which crashed into the World Trade Center, the Boston Globe said.
Time magazine said in a special report that U.S. officials told it that each of the ``terrorist teams had a certified pilot with them, some of whom had flown for Saudi Airlines.''
Time said two of the men had been placed on a border watch list which should have denied them entry into the country, but they got in anyway and appear to have been on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.
ARAB-AMERICANS FEEL TARGETED
Along with the sweep in Boston, U.S. agents also searched homes and businesses in south Florida and issued alerts for two cars in connection with the attacks. Media attention focused on one of the men listed on the flight manifest of one of the hijacked planes.There were signs of a backlash against Arab-Americans, even as they expressed horror at the attacks. Shots were fired overnight at a north Texas Islamic center.
Windows were shot out at the center, which includes a mosque and an Islamic school in the Dallas suburb of Irving, but no one was injured. ``This kind of misdirected anger is mistaken,'' said Abdul Raouf of the Islamic center.
Ashcroft said a number of suspected hijackers had been trained as pilots in the United States.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Boston police stand near a barrier tape in front of the Westin Hotel in Boston's Back Bay district, Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2001. A heavily armed FBI team searching for suspects in the terrorism attacks in New York and Washington stormed the hotel. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)