Thursday is the 13th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States at the World Trade Center, in Shanksville, Somerset County, and at the Pentagon. Until a few months ago, the part of New York City where crowds will gather on Thursday morning to mark the 13th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States had been mostly fenced off to the public. This year, for perhaps the first time since the attacks, a sense of normalcy and openness has taken root in the city blocks where two airliners hijacked by militants from al Qaeda crashed into the World Trade Centres twin towers. Rebuilding efforts at the site, where 2,753 people died, are nearing completion. The area, by turns a smoldering grave and an off-limits construction site for more than a decade, is now increasingly reconnected with the surrounding streets. Against that backdrop, politicians, families of those who died in the attacks and other dignitaries will gather on Thursday to observe moments of silence and hear recitations of nearly 3,000 victims names. It has become an annual ritual. Similar ceremonies will also be held in Washington, where a hijacked plane plowed into the Pentagon, and the field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where another hijacked plane crashed. In New York, it is the first commemoration ceremony since the opening of the 9/11 museum and the adjoining repository for unidentified human remains at the site. That is an important milestone for families of the victims, officials say. For the first time this year, because the museum opened in May, family members will be able to visit the museum as part of the commemoration, Michael Frazier, a museum spokesman, said.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 16:00:00 +0000
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