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The fourth passenger jet to crash on September 11 in America may have been headed for a nuclear power station to cause a Chernobyl-type disaster, media reports said on Sunday.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is studying a report that the four terrorists who seized the plane may have been attempting to steer it towards a cluster of nuclear power stations on the east coast of America.
The most likely target was Three Mile Island, the site of America's most serious nuclear accident in 1979, a report in the Sunday Times said.
United Airlines flight 93 crashed into a field near the tiny town of Shanksville, in Pennsylvania, 90 minutes after taking off from Newark, New Jersey. All 44 passengers and crewmembers died.
Until now it had been assumed that the hijackers of the plane, a Boeing 757, were planning to fly it either to the presidential retreat at Camp David, or to the White House.
But security officials have now revealed that within a week of the attacks, the FBI sent a report to Britain's MI5 saying that a "credible source" had said that the terrorists might have been planning to hit a nuclear plant.
PTI
The War on Terrorism: The Complete Coverage
The Terrorism Weblog: Latest Stories from Around the World
External Link: For further coverage, please visit www.saja.org/roundupsept11.html
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