Feb. 27, 1993, front page: World Trade Center bombed

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Blast rocks World Trade Center, killing 5

600 are injured in apparent car bombing; thousands in 2 towers flee fires, smoke

By Robert D. McFadden

© 1993 The New York Times

NEW YORK ─ An explosion apparently caused by a car bomb in an underground garage shook the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan with the force of a small earthquake shortly after noon yesterday, collapsing walls and floors, igniting fires and plunging the city's largest building complex into a maelstrom of smoke, darkness and fearful chaos.

Police said the blast killed at least five people and injured at least 600 others. Most suffered smoke inhalation or minor burns, but dozens had cuts, bruises, broken bones or serious burns. Police said about 275 victims were treated at hospitals and the rest by rescue and medical crews at the scene.

(One source told The Associated Press that one group, claiming to represent Croatian militants, called 15 minutes before the blast. A second source, a police officer at the scene who like the first spoke on condition of anonymity, said a "massive bomb" was responsible.)

The explosion trapped hundreds of people in debris or in smoke-filled stairwells of the two towers overhead and forces the evacuation of tens of thousands of workers from a trade center bereft of power for lights and elevators.

"It felt like a big boom," said Lisa Hoffman, who works at the nearby World Financial Center. "The building shook. I looked out the window to see if New Jersey had disappeared."

The blast, which was felt throughout the Wall Street area and a mile away on Ellis and Liberty islands on New York Harbor, also knocked out the police command and operations centers for the towers, which officials said rendered the office complex's evacuation plans useless.