9/11 anniversary: US honours victims 10 years on

The services for the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks were a day for America to pause and reflect

9/11: Ten years on

Ceremonies are being held in the US to honour the victims of the 9/11 attacks, 10 years after the event.

Nearly 3,000 people died when four hijacked airliners were crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.

A minute’s silence marked each moment that a plane struck, and a tower fell.

Mourners filed into a new memorial at Ground Zero, which bears the names of the dead. The names were read out amid tears at the ceremony.

Security is tight following warnings of a possible new attack by al-Qaeda, the group behind the 2001 attacks.

US President Barack Obama read a passage from the Bible’s Psalm 46 to the ceremony in New York: “Therefore, we will not fear, even though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.”

Accompanied by his wife Michelle, he travelled on to Pennsylvania, where the couple laid a wreath of white flowers at a new memorial in the field where the fourth plane was forced down in a Shanksville field by passengers who fought back.

In a speech at the Pentagon, Vice-President Joe Biden commended America’s armed forces for their service and their sacrifices since the attacks.

The first plane hit the WTC’s North Tower at 08:46 (13:46 GMT), the second at 09:03.

The third attack, on the Pentagon, occurred at 09:37 and it was at 10:03 that the jet crashed in Pennsylvania.

‘Lives cut short’

Hosting the ceremony at Ground Zero, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said a “perfect blue sky” had turned into “the blackest of nights” on 9/11.

But Washington is a city that lives the consequences of 9/11 every day. This is where the military operations are conceived, where the orders are given. This is where the wounded come: you see them at the metro stops, young men missing hands or eyes, perhaps with a young wife and a toddler.

Neighbours regularly disappear to Iraq and Afghanistan. Parents on the school run work counter-terrorism. Today, Washington paused to remember, but only momentarily.

Tomorrow, the city will return to the hurly burly of political life. But 9/11 and its consequences will still pulse through the mind and heart of the city.

“They were our neighbours, our friends, our husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, children and parents,” he said of the victims.

“They each had a face, a story, a life cut short from under them,” the mayor said. “As we listen, let us recall the words of Shakespeare: ‘Let us not measure our sorrow by their worth, for then it will have no end’.”

Readers fought to keep their emotions in check as they pronounced loved ones’ names.

Music punctuated the ceremony, which opened to the sound of bagpipes and heard the Brooklyn Youth Chorus sing the national anthem. Paul Simon later played his classic song The Sounds Of Silence.

Mourners streamed into the newly opened memorial and placed pictures and flowers beside names etched in bronze, while Mr Obama and his predecessor, George W Bush, bowed their heads and touched inscriptions.

The National September 11 Memorial features two reflecting pools, each almost an acre in size, in the footprints of the twin towers.

Behind the memorial stands One World Trade Center, a gleaming structure now three-quarters completed.

In the field in Shanksville, the presidential couple laid their wreath at the marble memorial to the 40 passengers and crew of the lost plane.

They were due to meet relatives of those killed on Flight 93, before flying back to Washington and the Pentagon for further ceremonies.

In New York, metal barriers have been erected on roads near Ground Zero, while police in New York and Washington are stopping and searching large vehicles entering bridges and tunnels.

The CIA received a warning last week that al-Qaeda might have sent attackers, some of them possibly US citizens, to bomb one of the cities.

The warning was described by officials as “credible but unconfirmed”.

‘New generation of patriots’

At the Pentagon, just outside Washington, Mr Biden praised the US soldiers who had killed al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan in May of this year.

A “new generation of patriots” were galvanised by 9/11, he told a military audience.

“We will not stop – you will not stop – until al-Qaeda is disrupted, dismantled and, ultimately, defeated.”

Memories may have been evoked of a righteous patriotic fervour to deal with those who threaten the country, and that desire does still exist, but the enthusiasm to reshape the destiny of other countries to make Americans safer has largely disappeared, the BBC’s North America editor, Mark Mardell, says.

Sunday’s ceremonies began at the US embassy in the Afghan capital, Kabul, where the flag was lowered to half-mast to remember those who died 10 years ago, as well as those who have died since. A piece of the twin towers is buried underneath the flag pole.

US forces were sent to Afghanistan to oust the Taliban from power after they had given sanctuary to al-Qaeda.

Overnight, insurgents attacked US bases in Bagram and Wardak, injuring about 80 US troops and killing two Afghan civilians, officials say.

More than 6,200 members of the US military have been killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

source: BBC News