A country still in shock after the horror. The United States on Monday paid tribute to the nearly 3,000 people killed in the deadliest attacks in history 22 years ago to the day, September 11, 2001, carried out by Al-Qaeda in New York, near Washington and Pennsylvania.
US Vice President Kamala Harris and the current and former mayors of New York gathered with crowds near Manhattan’s massive memorial museum Monday morning. They observed minutes of silence, marking the exact moments when four planes hijacked by Islamist commandos crashed, and the two towers of the World Trade Center (WTC) collapsed in a deluge of steel and dust .
Returning from the G20 in India and a state visit to Vietnam, Joe Biden celebrated the anniversary from a military base in Anchorage, Alaska. But if the conservative media and certain elected officials have denounced this choice, it is not the first time in history that an American president has not visited one of the attack sites. “I join you on this solemn day to renew our sacred promise: never forget, never forget, each of these precious lives stolen too soon, when evil struck”, launched Joe Biden on the tarmac, in front of American military.
“We must never lose our sense of national unity, let us make it the common cause of our times,” urged the American president in front of a huge American flag. He insisted that “terrorism, including political and ideological violence, are the opposite of everything that makes us a nation.”
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. “J I really wish I knew you. All of us in the family miss you. We will never forget,” said the grandson of firefighter Allan Tarasiewicz, killed, among 342 other firefighters, while 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 Afghan wars. 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 could be identified using DNA, New York forensics announced Friday, bringing the number of people identified dead in the towers to 1,649.