The United States began Monday to pay tribute to the nearly 3,000 people killed during the deadliest attacks in history, September 11, 2001, perpetrated by Al-Qaeda in New York, near Washington and in Pennsylvania.
US Vice President Kamala Harris and the current and former mayors of New York gathered with crowds near Manhattan's imposing memorial museum Monday morning: they observed minutes of silence, marking the exact moments when four planes hijacked by Islamist commandos had crashed, and where the two towers of the World Trade Center (WTC) had collapsed in a deluge of steel and dust.
President Joe Biden is scheduled to speak this afternoon during a stop in Anchorage, Alaska, returning from a trip to Vietnam.
Like every September 11, the names of the 2,753 people who died in the twin towers were read for three or four hours by members of their families, including teenagers who were not born on this disastrous September 11, 2001.
"I really wish I knew you. Each of us in the family misses you. We will never forget", whispered the grandson of firefighter Allan Tarasiewicz, killed, among 342 other firefighters, in intervening in the WTC towers.
At the Pentagon, very close to the federal capital Washington where an Al-Qaeda commando rushed an airliner into part of the Department of Defense building, the navy sounded a ship's siren to honor the 184 people killed.
Similarly in Pennsylvania, sirens sounded for a fourth plane crash that killed 40 passengers and crew.
“September 11 made America a nation at war and hundreds of thousands of people mobilized to serve our country in uniform,” said Defense Minister Lloyd Austin, referring to the two wars of Afghanistan and Iraq launched in October 2001 and March 2003 by then-President George W. Bush.
The September 11 attacks left a total of 2,977 dead (including 2,753 at the WTC) and nearly 6,300 injured according to an official report. A woman and a man killed in the twin towers were able to be identified using DNA, New York forensics announced Friday, bringing the number of people identified dead in the towers to 1,649.
burs number/ube
11/09/2023 19:03:26 - New York (AFP) - © 2023 AFP
