New York marked the 25th anniversary of the devastating 11 September 2001 attacks on Friday with a memorial ceremony overshadowed by US President Donald Trump’s absence and controversy over the attendance of the city’s first Muslim mayor.
Trump paid tribute at the Pentagon instead of New York, where hijacked aircraft struck the World Trade Center and killed the majority of the 2,977 people who died in the attacks that reshaped global politics.
Vice President JD Vance and Trump’s four living predecessors — Republican George W Bush, who was president during the attacks, and Democrats Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton — were expected to attend the ceremony at the “Ground Zero” site in lower Manhattan, reports AFP.
No speeches were scheduled during the ceremony. Instead, family members of the victims read out the names of those killed, while bells were rung to mark key moments during the attacks.
“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,” said Robert Kafka, a Chicago resident in his 60s visiting the 9/11 Memorial.
Alongside the former presidents was Democratic Mayor Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s first Muslim mayor, despite a campaign led by the right-wing New York Post and former mayor Rudy Giuliani urging him not to attend.
A petition with more than 100,000 signatures accused Mamdani of associating with unnamed 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, however, received praise after recently releasing thousands of documents showing what city officials knew about air toxicity levels in lower Manhattan after the attacks.
Following the collapse of the World Trade Center, an initial cloud of dust was followed by months of pollution and debris exposure, contributing to cancers and other illnesses among thousands of New Yorkers.
‘Toxic air’
“People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air,” Mamdani said on Tuesday.
On that nearly cloudless morning in 2001, 19 Al-Qaeda operatives hijacked four planes. Two aircraft crashed into the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, causing the iconic 110-storey buildings to collapse.
A third plane hit the Pentagon, while a fourth crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers attempted to overpower the hijackers.
Beyond those killed on 11 September, more than 9,400 people have died from illnesses linked to the attacks, according to a federal programme established to provide medical support to affected people.
Around 100 million Americans were either not 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 were expected to gather in lower Manhattan for the memorial ceremony.
The Secret Service established a security perimeter around the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, while New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said an anti-drone team would be deployed as a precaution.
She stressed that authorities had 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, whom Trump said in 2019 had also been killed.
Ahead of the memorial ceremony, a drone display featuring 2,977 lights — one for each victim of the attacks — illuminated the sky above New York Harbor.
