New York is preparing to mark the 25th anniversary of the 11 September 2001 attacks with a ceremony shaped by two striking absences and presences: US President Donald Trump will not attend in the city, while New York’s first Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is expected to join the commemoration despite a campaign demanding that he stay away.
Mr Trump will instead pay tribute at the Pentagon. In New York, hijacked aircraft brought down the World Trade Center and claimed most of the 2,977 lives lost that day, forever altering the United States and the wider world.
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Vice President JD Vance and Mr Trump’s four living predecessors are expected at the Ground Zero site in lower Manhattan. They include Republican George W Bush, who was president during the attacks, along with Democrats Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
The ceremony will not feature speeches. Instead, relatives of those who died will read the names of every victim, while a bell will sound at key moments corresponding to the unfolding attacks.
An improvised team of volunteers, firefighters, police and detection dogs found 21 people alive on the first day, but none thereafter
Mr Mamdani will stand alongside the former presidents despite a campaign led by the right-wing New York Post and former mayor Rudy Giuliani calling for him to be excluded from the event.
More than 100,000 people have signed a petition accusing Mr Mamdani of associating with unnamed figures who are “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.
Mr Mamdani has also drawn praise after releasing thousands of documents detailing what city officials knew about air toxicity in Lower Manhattan after the attacks.
The collapse of the World Trade Center sent an enormous cloud of dust through the area. Pollution and contaminated dust remained for months, contributing to cancers and other illnesses that continue to affect 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,” Mr Mamdani said.
Nineteen Al-Qaeda operatives seized four planes on the nearly cloudless morning of 11 September 2001.
Two of the aircraft struck the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, bringing down the landmark 110-story buildings.
A third plane hit the Pentagon. The fourth crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers attempted to overpower the hijackers.
In addition to those killed on 11 September, more than 9,400 people have died from illnesses linked to the attacks, according to the federal programme created to provide medical treatment for those affected.
343 firefighters lost their lives in the terrorist attacks on the twin towers
About 100 million Americans were not yet born or are too young to remember the events that shook the country.
Large crowds are expected in Lower Manhattan for the memorial service.
The Secret Service has established a heavily fortified security perimeter around the 9/11 Memorial and Museum.
Police commissioner Jessica Tisch said an anti-drone team would be deployed as a precaution, while emphasizing that authorities had no intelligence pointing to a specific threat against the gathering.
Al-Qaeda, meanwhile, has marked the anniversary with a video featuring images of its late leader Osama bin Laden and his son Hamza. Mr Trump said in 2019 that Hamza bin Laden had also been killed.
Before the memorial, a drone display illuminated New York Harbour with 2,977 lights, each representing a person killed in the attacks.
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