Somber Ceremonies Mark
9/11 Anniversary
New York: Relatives of
Sept 11 victims bowed their heads on Tuesday to mark the moments
exactly six years earlier when hijacked planes crashed into
the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.
Against a grim backdrop of dreary skies near New York’s
Ground Zero, four moments of silence were observed to remember
when the two planes struck the World Trade Center towers,
and when each tower fell.
“That day we felt isolated, but not for long and not
from each other,” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said
as the first ceremony began. “Six years have passed,
and our place is still by your side.”
Hours before, a video from al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden
was released, calling for sympathizers to join a “caravan”
of martyrs. It served as a stark reminder that the United
States has failed to catch the man believed to be behind the
attacks that killed almost 3,000 people.
The firefighters and first responders who helped rescue thousands
that day in 2001 and later recovered the dead were to read
the victims’ names for the first time. Many of those
rescuers are now ill with respiratory problems and cancers
themselves, and they blame the illnesses on exposure to the
fallen towers’ toxic dust.
With heads bowed, holding photographs of the dead and fighting
to hold back tears, relatives listened as the grim roll call
was read out. A memorial honoring Flight 93’s 40 passengers
and crew began at 9:45 am, shortly before the time the airliner
nose-dived into the empty Pennsylvania field.
In New York, drums and bagpipes played as an American flag
saved from the collapse was carried toward a stage. Firefighters
shared the platform with Rudy Giuliani (the New York mayor
at the time of the tragedy), who many victims’ families
and firefighters said should not speak at the service to keep
from politicizing it given his Republican presidential bid.
Sen Hillary Rodham Clinton, seeking the Democratic Party presidential
nomination, also attended the ceremonies. Democratic candidate
Barack Obama called for the country to “recapture the
sense of common purpose,” while saying the “threat
to America has only grown.”
The New York ceremony was more muted than in past years. Last
year, President George W. Bush laid a wreath at Ground Zero
but this year attended a private memorial service and observed
a moment of silence in Washington. In Washington, Bush paused
for a moment of silence outside the White House, while at
the Pentagon, Gen Peter Pace spoke at the wall where the hijacked
plane broke through.
In a speech to family members of some of the Pentagon victims,
Defense Secretary Robert Gates vowed, “The enemies of
America... will never again rest easy, for we will hunt them
down relentlessly and without reservation.” But, the
release of the Osama bin Laden video on Tuesday underscored
the US’s failure to find bin Laden despite Bush’s
vow in the wake of the attacks to take him “dead or
alive”.
The video featured an audiotape introduction by the al-Qaeda
leader and showed hijacker Waleed al-Shehri addressing the
camera. “We shall come at you from your front and back,
your right and left,” al-Shehri, one of the hijackers
on American Airlines Flight 11 which hit the World Trade Center,
warns Americans.
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