Like it has each September 11 evening since 2002, a “Tribute in Light” art installation that creates two vertical beams of blue light in lower Manhattan will be lit again Sunday night, beginning at Sunset and continuing until dawn Monday.
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Extremists on suicide missions carried out the 2001 attacks, hijacking four passenger jets and crashing them into the two World Trade Centre towers in NY and the Pentagon defence headquarters outside Washington. He lobbied lawmakers to pass a law that would strip sovereign immunity from countries believed to support terrorism, opening up the ability for victims of terror attacks to sue countries that might have helped carry out an attack.
Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump temporarily paused their bitter election campaign to attend the service with police and relatives of the victims at the Sept 11 memorial. The beams from 88 searchlights represent the World Trade Center towers.
The “Tribute in Light” was first set up in 2002, six months after the attacks, and has become part of the annual memorial service. They will stay lit until dawn Monday.
Clinton’s campaign says the Democratic presidential nominee left the ceremony in NY early after feeling “overheated”.
In New York, ceremony organizers included some additional music and readings Sunday to mark the milestone year.
Some family members reciting the names of loved ones killed on 9/11 have spoken about how their losses have inspired them to do good for others. Reading all the names takes about three hours, and some years the crowd has dwindled to 100 people by then.
Clinton appeared to stumble as she approached her vehicle and had to be helped. Jerry D’Amadeo, who was 10 when he lost his father, Vincent Gerard D’Amadeo, said he worked this summer with children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where 26 children and adults were massacred in 2012.
The ceremony honoring the men and women, widely believed to have thwarted an attack on the U.S. Capitol on September 11, 2001, began on a breezy morning with the Newark Boys Choir singing “America the attractive”. At a Pentagon ceremony, President Barack Obama praised military members and others who have helped the USA fight terrorism, urged Americans not to let their enemies divide them and called the countrys diversity one of its greatest strengths.
The campaign says she’s “feeling much better”.
Cathy Cava, who lost her sister, Grace Susca Galante, has attended all 15 years.
About an hour before the official commemoration start, police officers in uniform and bagpipers rehearsed part of the ceremony involving a display of the USA flag. The ride is a tribute to the first responders and their efforts to save those injured or killed in the terrorist attack.
Before the ceremony, the din of voices were muffled by the occasional sounds of airplanes overhead or motorcycles and cars streaming to the Memorial Plaza and the wall of 40 names.
Nineteen hijackers, 15 of them from Saudi Arabia, were killed in the attacks, which led directly to the USA war in Afghanistan, where al-Qaida trained attackers against the United States, and indirectly to the war in Iraq.
Meanwhile, the crowd has thinned somewhat at the anniversary ceremony in recent years, though over 1,000 survivors, recovery workers, victims’ relatives and dignitaries attended last year.
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Ceremonies were held on Sunday across the country to remember the victims, including the recital of the names of the dead, tolling church bells and a tribute at the site where New York City’s twin towers tumbled. Hundreds of people also are expected at a ceremony at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville.
