By Fiona Mackie

TODAY is the harrowing 17-year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack carried out on the World Trade Centre in New York.

September 11 will forever be remembered for the series of four planes that attacked the United States, with two hijacked planes ultimately striking the World Trade Centre. The attack took 2,977 lives. The number of British casualties was 67.

Many students today were barely alive when the attacks took place.

Darren Kyle, 20, a former Journalism student at the University of the West of Scotland said: “The attack on the World Trade Centre is the most impactful attack on US soil to date. It has changed the way we travel, it has changed our perception of air travel and there’s still debate about what actually happened 17 years later.”

Across the globe, people still remember the shock and sadness inflicted from the attacks. To commemorate and remember the dead, New York built the 9/11 memorial museum, located at the World Trade Centre site. It was planned to create a memorial for the victims in the aftermath of the attacks. Every year on the anniversary, the names of the dead are read out.

The event has caused a lot of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from the amount of exposure in the following days from the attack, with 11.2 per cent of New York City residents suffering from PTSD in November 2001 according to Very Well Mind. Two decades on from the attacks, people are still affected, either from remembering or learning about the distressing day.

Beth Oliver, 21, an English Literature student at Glasgow University said: “I wasn’t old enough to remember it happening, but the sheer horror of the event is something I think will reach us all with every passing year.

“From watching clips of the attacks and learning about it in Modern Studies in High School, I still feel afraid when I need to go through an airport and onto a plane.”

For most students today, the events of the day are taught in school and from reading articles. The message remains the same.

Darren Kyle continued: “Even though it was 17 years ago, there are still emotional wounds that will never heal, both personal wounds and the wounds of a divided nation that, for a brief moment, in the days after the attacks, put politics aside and was united.”