Casualties of the September 11 attacks
2,974 victims were confirmed to have died in the initial attacks; this includes Sneha Anne Philip, a doctor, who in 2008 was ruled to have died on 9/11. In 2007, the New York City medical examiner's office began to add people who died of illnesses caused by exposure to dust from the site to the official death toll. The first such victim was a woman, a civil rights lawyer, who had died from a chronic lung condition in February 2002. In September 2009, the office added a man who died in October 2008, and in 2011, a male accountant who had died in December 2010. This raises the number of victims at the World Trade Center site to 2,753, and the overall 9/11 death toll to 2,996.
United States Army
On 11 September 2001, 53 Army civilians (47 employees and six contractors) and 22 soldiers were among the 125 victims killed in the Pentagon in a terrorist attack when American Airlines Flight 77 commandeered by five Al-Qaeda hijackers slammed into the western side of the building, as part of the September 11 attacks. Lieutenant General Timothy Maude was the highest-ranking military official killed at the Pentagon and the most senior U.S. Army officer killed by foreign action since the death of Lieutenant General Simon B. Buckner Jr. on 18 June 1945 in the Battle of Okinawa during World War II.
In response to the 11 September attacks and as part of the Global War on Terror, U.S. and NATO forces invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, displacing the Taliban government. The U.S. Army also led the combined U.S. and allied invasion of Iraq in 2003. It served as the primary source for ground forces with its ability to sustain short and long-term deployment operations. In the following years, the mission changed from conflict between regular militaries to counterinsurgency, resulting in the deaths of more than 4,000 U.S. service members (as of March 2008) and injuries to thousands more. 23,813 insurgents were killed in Iraq between 2003–2011.