🔴 Follow live Trump’s speech at Pentagon’s 9/11 ceremony
New York on Friday marked the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, with US President Donald Trump attending a ceremony at the Pentagon while Vice President JD Vance and four former presidents joined commemorations at Ground Zero, where victims’ relatives will read the names of those killed.
Twenty-five years after the deadliest attack on US soil, Americans paused on Friday to commemorate the nearly 3,000 people killed when hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania – and to wrestle with the consequences of September 11 that reverberate to this day.
Read more9/11 then and now: Do September 2001 attacks still shape our world?
In New York, family members of the victims joined Vice President JD Vance and four former US presidents at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan. The ceremony began, as always, at 8:46am with a moment of silence to remember the shocking instant when American Airlines Flight 11 struck the World Trade Center’s North Tower.
Shortly after, victims’ family members began reading aloud the names of all 2,977 people who died on September 11, as well as the six people killed in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, a sombre recitation that will last for hours.
Other moments of silence, marking when the other three airplanes crashed and the two towers collapsed, followed. For the first time, a seventh silence was observed to honour the thousands who have died since 2001 from illnesses tied to the toxic dust that poisoned the air for months afterward.
Read moreNew York City releases post-9/11 air toxicity information kept secret for 25 years
In Arlington, Virginia, senior military leaders gathered amid heavy rain early on Friday to watch the unfurling of an American flag at the west side of the Pentagon where American Airlines Flight 77 hit, killing 184 people in all. President Donald Trump spoke at a ceremony there.
"Today we renew the sacred oath that we first swore in their names a quarter of a century ago. We will never, ever forget. That's why we fight today," said Trump, who opted to skip commemorations in New York.
"We don't have a choice. There can only be victory. We fight hard. We fight to win."
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Cover image: © France 24 18:12
Mourners also held ceremony in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at the crash site where passengers brought down one of the four hijacked jetliners, United Airlines Flight 93, that had been headed for Washington.
The attacks shaped generations of Americans who lived through the day or grew up in its aftermath, influencing US foreign policy, domestic politics and public attitudes toward security.
But for many whom the attacks directly affected – the victims’ families, first responders and rescue workers – the anniversary is a tribute to the lives lost on a clear blue day a quarter century ago and the heartbreak that followed.
Caroline Ogonowski’s father, John, was the captain of Flight 11, which took off from Boston 47 minutes before striking the North Tower.
Ogonowski, now 39, had her first baby this year and named him after her father. She brought him her father’s grave last week and was attending a memorial ceremony in Boston on Friday.
"This year, there’s this new sadness in knowing that they won’t ever get to know each other," Ogonowski, who has worked in disaster relief and humanitarian assistance, said in a phone interview. "My father will never know his grandson. And my son will never know his grandfather."
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Cover image: 25 years on, how do young Americans feel about 9/11? © France 24 01:47
"We owe it to my father and all the others that we lost on that day to make sure that we continue to teach future generations about what happened, about who these people were, who these heroes were, how our country came together and became stronger because of it," she added.
Generational Pain
A generation of Americans has grown up since 2001 who are too young to remember the attacks but whose lives were fundamentally altered by them.
The attacks initiated the "War on Terror", which led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq that lasted years. The resulting public backlash helped fuel Trump’s rise a decade ago, when he vowed not to start new foreign entanglements — a promise being tested by the current Iran war.
At home, Americans expressed deep solidarity and patriotism, as well as sorrow, in the immediate wake of the attacks.
At the same time, however, Muslim Americans and immigrants from Muslim-majority countries faced a rise in prejudice and hate crimes. Public polls have found 9/11 colours Americans’ perceptions of Muslims to this day. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, has faced calls from some Republicans to skip Friday’s ceremony, which he rejected.
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Cover image: En esta foto de archivo tomada el 11 de septiembre de 2001, los escombros de las torres gemelas del World Trade Center arden después de un ataque terrorista en el bajo Manhattan, Nueva York. © Alexandre Fuchs / AFP 01:55
Casualties were not limited to those who perished on September 11. Many rescue workers who spent weeks or months at the site afterward, as well as nearby residents and others, were sickened by toxins in the air and eventually died.
Patrick Whalen’s father, also named Patrick, was a New York City firefighter who responded to the attacks and continued working at Ground Zero for months amid the dust and rubble. In 2020, he was diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma, a rare cancer linked to exposure to toxic carcinogens, and died in 2021.
"The government told him it was safe to breathe, and, obviously, it was not true," the younger Whalen said after a New York City Fire Department memorial service this week.
Information that the air at Ground Zero was safe to breathe came from the US Environmental Protection Agency. Its former administrator, Christine Todd Whitman, apologized in a 2016 interview with The Guardian, saying the agency did its best with the knowledge it had.
The New York City Fire Department lost 343 members on September 11. More than 600 additional firefighters, including some retired members who took part in the rescue effort, have died of 9/11-related illnesses since then, department figures show.
Twenty-six have died this year alone.
(FRANCE 24 with Reuters)