New York is marking the 9/11 25th anniversary on Friday with a solemn ceremony at Ground Zero, where families will honour the 2,977 people killed in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
US President Donald Trump will not attend the New York ceremony. Instead, he is expected to pay his respects at the Pentagon, which was also targeted in the attacks.
Vice President JD Vance and four former US presidents, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, are expected at the Ground Zero memorial in Lower Manhattan.
The ceremony will feature bereaved family members reading the names of those killed, while bells will mark key moments of the attacks. No speeches are scheduled.
“Memorials like this and discussions about those events are an important part of keeping it alive and understanding how we prevent tragedies like this from ever happening again,” Robert Kafka, a Chicago visitor in his 60s, told AFP at the 9/11 Memorial.
Mamdani attends despite opposition
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani is also expected to attend the ceremony, despite opposition from some right-wing groups and figures who had urged him to stay away.
Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, has faced criticism from former mayor Rudy Giuliani and the New York Post over his attendance.
A petition with more than 100,000 signatures accused Mamdani of associating with unspecified individuals who were “dismissive of American institutions or insufficiently critical of extremist ideologies”.
“It’s concerning to me that the mayor is being treated differently simply because he is Muslim,” city council member Shahana Hanif told CNN.
Mamdani has also received praise after releasing thousands of documents detailing what city officials knew about air pollution in Lower Manhattan after the World Trade Center attacks.
Toxic air still affects survivors
The collapse of the World Trade Center sent a huge cloud of dust and debris through Lower Manhattan. Pollution and lingering dust remained for months, contributing to illnesses affecting thousands of people.
“People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air,” Mamdani said on Tuesday.
More than 9,400 people have died from illnesses linked to the September 11 attacks, according to the federal programme established to provide medical care to those affected.
Remembering September 11
Nineteen Al-Qaeda operatives hijacked four planes on September 11, 2001.
Two aircraft crashed into the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, causing the iconic 110-storey buildings to collapse.
A third plane struck the Pentagon, while a fourth crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers fought back against the hijackers.
Twenty-five years later, the attacks remain a defining event for millions of Americans. About 100 million Americans were not yet born or were too young to remember the tragedy.
Logan Miller, 32, lost his uncle in the attacks and later lost his grandfather to a 9/11-related illness.
“I think the next generation just can’t fathom what actually transpired and how someone could be impacted by that, and so I actually find them asking more questions,” he told AFP.
Large crowds are expected in Lower Manhattan for the memorial, with the Secret Service establishing a heavy security presence around the 9/11 Memorial and Museum.
New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said an anti-drone team would also be deployed as a precaution, although there was no intelligence indicating a specific threat to the gathering.
Meanwhile, Al-Qaeda marked the anniversary by releasing a video featuring images of its late leader Osama bin Laden and his son Hamza, who Trump said in 2019 had also been killed.
Ahead of the memorial, 2,977 lights were projected above New York Harbor in a drone show, with each light representing one person killed in the September 11 attacks.
