25th Anniversary: 25 Years After 9/11 – USA Remembers Terror Victims

Seventy-five years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the United States commemorates the victims through moments of silence, bell rings, and light installations. The focus of the remembrance events remains on the locations that were attacked: the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon near Washington, as well as a field in the US state of Pennsylvania where an airplane crashed.

US President Donald Trump is expected to attend a commemoration event at the Pentagon. In New York, family members are expected to read out the names of the deceased in the morning at the site of the destroyed Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Six moments of silence mark, among other things, the impacts of the two planes and the collapse of the towers.

For the first time, a seventh moment of silence is provided for individuals who later died from diseases or injuries due to the attacks. One hundred million Americans, without a personal memory of 9/11, commemorate the attacks. On the 11th of September 2001, nearly 3,000 people died when Islamist network Al-Qaeda hijacked four passenger planes and crashed two of them into the towers of the World Trade Center.

Another plane hit the Pentagon - the headquarters of the Department of Defense - in Washington. The fourth aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania, where the passengers resisted the hijackers. The destination of the attackers with this plane remains unclear to this day. At the crash site, artists dedicated oil portraits of the passengers to the occasion of the anniversary.

The New York firefighters (FDNY) will commemorate the more than 300 firefighters who died in the attack. More than 400 other firefighters have reportedly died since then from diseases related to the collapse of the World Trade Center. In New York's Bryant Park, 2,753 chairs are set up empty chairs, one for each New York victim. On the chairs, flowers can be placed or messages left.

Trump declared September 11th as "Patriot Day" as in previous years and ordered the flags on federal buildings to be flown at half-staff in remembrance of the victims. Around 100 million Americans alive today were too young, according to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, to remember the attacks or were not even born. More deaths from late effects than from the attacks themselves mean that the number of people suffering from health consequences of the attacks continues to grow.

According to the US government, the number of people who have died from diseases related to the 9/11 attacks has now surpassed the number of those killed immediately in the attacks. Due to the collapse of the approximately 400-meter-high towers and the ongoing fires, a highly toxic mixture was created in Lower Manhattan, among other things, from pulverized concrete, glass, gypsum board, burned plastics and other pollutants.

Thousands of rescue workers, helpers, residents and employees were exposed to the dust and smoke. The state World Trade Center Health Program now cares for more than 150,000 people with possible consequences of this exposure. Accompanying the remembrance in New York is a political dispute over Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Family members of some victims have petitioned that he should stay away from the central commemoration ceremony at Ground Zero.

The initiators accuse him, among other things, of not distancing himself clearly enough from statements perceived as extremist. Others criticized it as a campaign and anti-Muslim racism against Mamdani, who is the city's first Muslim mayor.