Twenty-two years have passed, but the memory of the traumatic events is still as vivid as ever, for the victims’ loved ones and the American nation. The United States began, Monday, September 11, to pay tribute to the 3,000 people killed during the deadliest attacks in history, on September 11, 2001, during attacks perpetrated by Al-Qaeda in New York, near of Washington and Pennsylvania.
On Monday morning, US Vice President Kamala Harris, along with current New York Mayor Eric Adams and former city officials gathered with a crowd near the imposing Manhattan Memorial Museum. 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.
President Joe Biden is due to speak in the afternoon during a stopover in Anchorage, Alaska, returning from a trip to Vietnam.
A total of 2,977 dead and nearly 6,300 injured
Like every September 11, the names of the 2,753 people who died in the twin towers were pronounced for three or four hours by members of their family, including teenagers who were not born during the attacks.
“I really wish I knew you. You are missed by all of us in the family. We will never forget,” testified 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 of 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 memory of the 184 people killed. Similarly, in Pennsylvania, sirens sounded for a fourth plane crash that killed 40 passengers and crew.
“September 11 [2001] turned America into a nation at war and hundreds of thousands of people mobilized to serve our country in uniform,” said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, referring to both wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, launched in October 2001 and March 2003 by President George W. Bush.
The attacks of September 11, 2001 left a total of 2,977 dead and nearly 6,300 injured according to an official report. A woman and a man killed in the twin towers could be identified thanks to their DNA, announced Friday the medical examiner of New York, which brings to 1,649 the number of people identified dead in the towers.