(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) Against that backdrop politicians families of those who died in the attacks and other dignitaries will gather on Thursday to observe moments of silence.Until a few months ago the part of New York City where crowds will gather on Thursday morning to mark the 13th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States had been mostly fenced off to the public.
This year for perhaps the first time since the attacks a sense of normalcy and openness has taken root in the city blocks where two airliners hijacked by militants from Al Qaeda crashed into the World Trade Center’s twin towers. The Tribute in Light illuminates the sky behind the 9/11 Memorial waterfalls and reflecting pool in New York on September 10 2014 the night before the 13th anniversary of the September 11 2001 attacks. - AFP
Rebuilding efforts at the site where 2753 people died are nearing completion. The area by turns a smoldering grave and an off-limits construction site for more than a decade is now increasingly reconnected with the surrounding streets.
Against that backdrop politicians families of those who died in the attacks and other dignitaries will gather on Thursday to observe moments of silence and hear recitations of nearly 3000 victims’ names. It has become an annual ritual.
Similar ceremonies will also be held in Washington where a hijacked plane plowed into the Pentagon and the field in Shanksville Pennsylvania where another hijacked plane crashed.
In New York it is the first commemoration ceremony since the opening of the 9/11 museum and the adjoining repository for unidentified human remains at the site. That is an important milestone for families of the victims officials say.
“For the first time this year because the museum opened in May family members will be able to visit the museum as part of the commemoration” Michael Frazier a museum spokesman said.
While lower Manhattan may look and feel different this year the external threat to the United States represented by the 9/11 attacks still weighs. ISIS a militant group that began as an offshoot of Al Qaeda is viewed by Washington as an increasing danger.
The group which released videos of its fighters beheading two American hostages has even revived fears of an attack on American soil.
Although the reconstruction has been plagued by delays two of the new skyscrapers built around the site of the fallen twin towers are now open while 1 World Trade Center the tallest skyscraper in the Western hemisphere is due to open next year.
Thousands of tourists pose for photographs each day around the two memorial waterfalls that mark the footprints of the towers set in a paved plaza dotted with trees before lining up to visit the subterranean museum about the attack.
Critics have said that the plaza with its unusually prohibitive rules for a city public space and deliberate lack of garbage cans is of little use to people who live or work in the area.
Michael Kimmelman architecture critic for the New York Times described the plaza as “formal gigantic impersonal flat built to awe something for tourists.”
Obama is expected to speak at the Pentagon the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense during a private ceremony on Thursday morning for relatives of the people killed in the attack on the building.
The only ceremony open to the general public is at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Pennsylvania which marks the site where one of the four airliners crashed.
The Congressional Gold Medal the nation’s highest civilian award honoring the passengers and crew who were aboard that flight will go on public display for the first time the National Park Service said. For more news from Khaleej Times follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/khaleejtimes and on Twitter at khaleejtimes Follow khaleejtimes ->
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