Commemoration of September 11th
Biden calls on Americans to unite
September 12, 2023, 4:00 a.m
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The bells ring at Ground Zero and US citizens in Washington and Pennsylvania also remember the victims of September 11th. On the 22nd anniversary of the attacks, President Biden calls on his compatriots for reconciliation.
On the 22nd anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, US President Joe Biden called on his country to unite. “We must never lose our sense of national unity, that should be our common concern,” Biden said in a speech at a military base in Alaska on the way back from a trip to Asia. Speaking in front of a large US flag, Biden added that “terrorism, including political and ideological violence, is the antithesis of everything we stand for as a nation.” The president urged people to use September 11 as an opportunity to “renew faith in one another.”
In New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, the almost 3,000 deaths were commemorated at the sites of the attacks. Numerous politicians, relatives of victims and rescue workers took part in a ceremony on Monday morning at the former site of the World Trade Center in New York, which was destroyed in the attacks. Vice President Kamala Harris and New York Mayor Eric Adams were among those in attendance.
Bells ringing at Ground Zero
At the memorial event at so-called Ground Zero, bells were rung and the names of the attack victims were read out. A first minute’s silence was held at 8:46 a.m. local time. At that point, the first of the planes hijacked by members of the al-Qaeda terrorist network had crashed into one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
At the ceremony at the Pentagon in Washington, where another plane crashed, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said: “September 11th made America a nation at war, and hundreds of thousands have volunteered to serve our country in uniform “I know it hurts to remember this milestone year after year.”
A total of 2,977 people were killed in the attacks carried out with four hijacked aircraft 22 years ago: 2,753 in New York, 184 at the US Department of Defense in Washington and 40 in the US state of Pennsylvania. The attacks shook the United States to its core and sent the world power into a decades-long “war on terror.” Every year, ceremonies commemorate the victims of 9/11, as the date is briefly referred to in the USA.