AS is becoming his custom, Rudolph Giuliani articulated the thoughts of his city, and the world. The New York mayor's first thought on learning of the air disaster was: "Oh my God. Not again."

Watching television pictures of plumes of smoke drifting over New York, we all thought the same. The parallels with September 11 were frightening.

Two months and a day after hijackers crashed planes into the World Trade Centre, another passenger aircraft took off at about 9am, fully laden with fuel, only to plunge into the city, wreaking death and destruction.

The timing, too, seemed significant. This was Veterans Day, when America remembers its war dead. And the disaster followed the allies' dramatic progress in the war in Afghanistan.

Even the location of the impact pointed to a man-made atrocity. The suburb of Rockaway is home to many of the police, firefighters and Trade Centre workers who lost their lives nine weeks ago.

New York responded by shutting its airports, tunnels and bridges. This city, attacked from the sky and on the ground by the anthrax outbreak, again felt under siege.

The panic only subsided when the authorities began to suggest that the disaster was less likely caused by terrorism than by the cruellest bad luck. That sent an odd wave of relief cascading around the world.

Only now can the people of New York and the Dominican Republic begin to mourn.

Their nightmare all but obscured the historic events in Afghanistan. The Taliban's full retreat from the capital Kabul is good news. It is demonstrable progress in what has proved to be a difficult campaign, and as such should steady the nerves of those who were questioning the achievements of the air strikes.

While significant, this is - to borrow from Churchill - only the end of the beginning. Kabul is now a city without rulers. And the Taliban will be harder to prise from their southern Afghan strongholds. The war against terror is far from over.

Updated: 11:15 Tuesday, November 13, 2001