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US Marines look on as Pentagon building burns
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Pentagon officials tonight estimated an attack on the building has resulted in 100 casualties.
A huge explosion was caused when an airliner crashed into the Pentagon, prompting the immediate evacuation of the headquarters of the US military.
Grey smoke billowed from the five-sided building. The more than 20,000 civilians and military men and women who work in the building streamed into the surrounding car parks, driven by blue and white strobe alarm lights and wailing signs.
Eyewitnesses told local television stations a commercial airliner appeared to have smashed into the side of the building, causing it to collapse.
A short time later a car bomb exploded outside the US State Department in Washington DC.
Fires are still burning fiercely in the Pentagon, and a large number of people have been injured there, a spokesman said
Rear Admiral Craig Quigley spoke at around 2:10 p.m. (1810 Irish time) to reporters gathered at a gas station near the Pentagon, which had been evacuated. Smoke was visible billowing from one facade of the Defense Department headquarters, located in Virginia just outside Washington.
The Pentagon is under its highest state of alert, threat condition delta, Admiral Quigley said.
"Fires are still burning very strongly inside the Pentagon ... we know there are a large number of injured but we have no sense of scale at all," Admiral Quigley said.
"It appears as if a plane intentionally flew into the Pentagon," he said, adding that he had no information on the type of plane. The impact came shortly after 9:00 a.m. (2 p.m. Irish time).
An eye-witness said an American Airlines passenger jet flew straight into the Pentagon and crashed into the first floor of the building.
Defense Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld was in his office when the aircraft hit, Admiral Quigley said. "He went running down to the site where the aircraft hit and was helpful in loading some of the injured onto some stretchers."
Mr Rumsfeld and a team of senior officials are now in the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon, a information nerve center where officials gather in times of crisis to monitor developments.
The command center was not damaged in the attack but is smoky, Admiral Quigley said.
The airplane's impact left a huge gap in one side of the five-sided building and nearby walls scorched black by fire and smoke.
Shortly after the initial impact there was a secondary explosion from propane tanks that blew up in a part of the Pentagon that is undergoing renovations, according to Admiral Quigley.
"It's a section of the Pentagon that was under renovation so if we're fortunate it might have been more lightly populated, but I don't know," he said.