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NEW YORK -- Communications, financial transactions, and travel are disrupted across the United States in the wake of what President George W. Bush is calling an "apparent terrorist attack" involving what appear to be coordinated incidents around the country.

Two airplanes flew into the twin towers of New York City's World Trade Center around 9 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday morning, killing scores of people, paralyzing city ground and air traffic, and blocking communication. Within an hour, both towers had collapsed. Similar airplane crashes were reported at the Pentagon and outside Pittsburgh.

The attacks have led the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to close all U.S. airports.

Communication Disrupted

Major Internet news sites have slowed to a crawl or became inaccessible. Telephone communication has also become sluggish.

Telecommunication companies' headquarters could not immediately reached for comment on the precise extent of disruption to the U.S. communication networks.

"As you can imagine, there are a lot of incoming calls that are trying to reach the U.S. and New York in particular," said AT&T's U.K. communications director, Phillip Coathup. "We are doing a lot of call blocking right now to make sure that the networks themselves don't become blocked. In situations like these, the network is managed by blocking the calls locally. We obviously don't know how long this will continue and at this point, I am not sure of the exact status of our networks inside of the U.S."

Other telecom officials echo this statement.

"All networks are under a very heavy load at the moment, from the sheer volume of traffic. We're working together with the other network operators to try to manage the load," according to Peter Eustace, a Cable & Wireless spokesperson based in London.

Communication to the U.S. from spots in Asia was also disrupted.

"There are no circuits available to the U.S. at present. The lines are overwhelmed after the accident in New York," said an international operator for KDDI, the largest carrier of international calls out of Japan. Calls from Japan to other countries are also being hit as international capacity is completely saturated in the hours after the attacks.

Evacuations Ordered

The attacks on the World Trade Center apparently were coordinated with similar incidents in Washington, D.C. Explosions in Washington led to buildings being evacuated there. City centers and government buildings throughout major U.S. cities, including Boston, San Francisco, and Chicago are also being evacuated.

No group or individual is has been blamed for the attacks or has claimed responsibility.

Immediately after the explosions, officials at the Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange suspended trading. Downtown New York's financial district, the area in which the World Trade Center is located, was pandemonium, according to eyewitnesses.

"People are running down the streets screaming, cars are going through the streets backward, and the subways are closed. Someone down the hall from me saw people jumping from the World Trade Center," says one eyewitness, describing the scene from an office building about half a mile away from the Twin Towers, just before the second one collapsed.

One of the planes that flew into the World Trade Center had taken off from Boston and was hijacked, according to media reports.

"I've ordered that the full resources of the federal government go to help the victims and their families and to conduct a full-scale investigation to hunt down and to find those folks who have committed this act. Terrorism against this nation will not stand," Bush said in his remarks.

IDG News Service staff members Stacy Cowley in New York, Laura Rohde in London, Martyn Williams in Tokyo, and Rick Perera in Berlin contributed to this report.

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