Daily US Times: Relatives of people who died on September 11 attacks have read out victims’ names, as the United States marks 20 years since the deadliest terror attacks in the country’s history.
Many relatives of the victims of the September 11 attacks struggled to hold back tears at the ceremony held at Ground Zero, the site of the World Trade Center Twin Towers destroyed in the attacks by al-Qaeda militants.
Lisa Reina who lost her husband cried: “Twenty years feels like an eternity, but it still feels like yesterday.”
A minute’s of silence was held at the exact time each hijacked paggenger plane crashed into both of the towers of the World Trade Center.
George W Bush, the president of the United States at the time, gave a speech in Pennsylvania, where one of the planes crashed into a field after passengers protested the hijackers.
Mr Bush said: “The world was loud with carnage and sirens, and then quiet with missing voices that would never be heard again. It’s hard to describe the mix of feelings we experienced.”
The official memorial in New York started with a minute’s silence at 08:46 local time (12:46 GMT) – the exact moment the first plane hit the World Trade Center’s North Tower in 2001.
Roses continued to be placed beside the names of the Twin Tower attack victims etched into the Ground Zero memorial.
Over the next few hours, there were five more moments of silence- marking the time when the second hijacked plane crashed into the South Tower, when a third plane struck the Pentagon just outside the nation’s capital Washington DC, when the fourth passenger plane crashed in Pennsylvania, and finally when each tower collapsed.
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