The pools sit within the footprints where the Twin Towers once stood and the names of every person who died in the 2001 attacks as well as in the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing are inscribed into the Memorial pools.
Advertisement
Relatives in the crowd embraced and some held photos of loved ones and signs that read: “Never to be forgotten”, “We miss you” and “Gone too soon”.
Tom Acquarviva lost his 29-year-old son, Paul, who worked at financial services firm Canter Fitzgerald on the 101st to 105th floors of the North Tower, just above where the first plane struck.
Still, the damage was extreme, both in the number of lives lost and ruined, and in the deep gash the attacks left on Americans’ sense of being secure from such nightmares on their home soil.
A third hijacked jet never made it to the terrorists’ intended target, because passengers in that plane refused to let it happen, rose up against their captors, and sacrificed themselves to save countless others.
Commemorations unfolded in NY and outside Washington, where hijackers piloted planes into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, and at a rural field in Pennsylvania, where a plane crashed after passengers famously fought back against their hijackers.
In New York, relatives fought back tears, clasped onto each other and bowed their heads at the September 11 Memorial on the site of the destroyed World Trade Center, which was closed to the general public.
US President Barack Obama had said in May 2011 that “justice has been done” to “those families who lost loved ones to al Qaeda’s terror” 10 years after the 9/11 attacks when US Navy Seals carried out a successful operation to kill the attacks mastermind Osama Bin Laden in a house in Pakistan.
“Fifteen years are like 15 seconds”, Giaccone said. We stand with the survivors who still bear the scars of that day.
No public officials spoke at the NY ceremony, in keeping with a tradition that began in 2012.
Mrs. Clinton was forced to leave early.
It was the country’s “solemn duty”, he said in a statement, “to work together as one nation to keep all of our people safe from an enemy that seeks nothing less than to destroy our way of life”.
Clinton said in a statement that the horror of September 11, 2001 would never be forgotten, and paid tribute to the victims and first responders. The former secretary of state was at the ceremony at Ground Zero in Manhattan for 90 minutes and greeted some family members of those killed in the deadly terror strikes 15 years ago, her campaign said in a statement. She emerged later and told reporters she was “feeling great”.
Houses of worship throughout the city have been asked to toll their bells at 8:46 a.m. EDT (1246 GMT), the time American Airlines Flight 11 slammed into the North Tower.
At 10:03 a.m. (1403 GMT) United Flight 93 crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and the final moment of silence will be observed at 10:28 a.m. (1428 GMT) when the North Tower fell. The Tribute in Light (also known as The Annual Tribute) was set up at Ground Zero (which is the basal section of the area where the Twin Towers were present). The beams reach four miles (6.4 km) into the sky and can be seen as far as 60 miles (96.6 km) away on a clear night, organizers say.
Clinton – a former NY senator – has frequently highlighted her efforts, including in a campaign ad released Friday, to aid those affected by the World Trade Center collapse. We thank the first responders who risked everything to save others. The attacks were planned by the terrorist group al-Qaeda. The ride pays tribute to the strength, courage and heroism of the first responders who led recovery efforts during and following the terrorist attacks.
But in an address which touched on his own experience as an officer in Afghanistan, stretching back a decade, he also underlined how far from peace the country remains.
Advertisement
The al-Qaida hijackings of September 11, 2001 – the first foreign attack on the USA mainland in almost two centuries – ruptured a sense of safety and plunged the West into wars still being fought today.
