America pauses to remember victims of 9/11 attacks 25 years on

Twenty-five years after the deadliest attack on US soil, Americans paused on Friday to commemorate the nearly 3000 people killed when hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania – and to wrestle with the consequences of September 11 that reverberate to this day.

In New York, family members of the victims joined Vice President JD Vance, former president George W. Bush, who was in office on 9/11, and ex-presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden at Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan. The ceremony began, as always, at 8.46am with a moment of silence to remember the shocking instant when American Airlines Flight 11 struck the World Trade Centre’s North Tower.

Shortly after, victims’ family members began reading aloud the names of all 2977 people who died on September 11, as well as the six people killed in the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing, a sombre recitation that lasts for hours. In a reminder of the time that has passed, some readers were children who had never met the relatives they lost in 2001.

Elsie Caldwell carried a photograph of her son Kenny Caldwell to hear his name and all the others read aloud. She last spoke to him that morning a quarter-century ago.

“Mom, I just want to let you know that I love you,” Caldwell said he told her in a final phone call. She is one of many relatives of victims whose remains never were recovered.

Other moments of silence, marking when the other three planes hijacked by al-Qaeda terrorists crashed and the two towers collapsed, followed. For the first time, a seventh silence was observed to honour the thousands who have died since 2001 from illnesses tied to the toxic dust that poisoned the air for months afterward.

Gregory Carafello came to the ceremony to honour the memory of his lifelong friend James Martello, who worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial firm that lost more than 650 employees in the attacks. Carafello himself was on the 18th floor of the South Tower but managed to evacuate.

“Everyone should realise that it was a very bad, catastrophic day for many families,” he said. “These were not warriors. These were people like you and me going to work.”

At the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, where American Airlines Flight 77 struck the building’s west flank, killing 184, senior military leaders gathered amid heavy rain to watch the unfurling of an American flag before US President Donald Trump chronicled some of the stories of those aboard who perished in the crash: a woman pregnant with her first child, a family of four headed to Australia, three sixth-graders on a field trip.

“In those harrowing days after the attacks, we saw the authentic spirit of our nation,” Trump said at the ceremony.

The president and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, who also delivered remarks, both used their speeches to make the case for the Iran war, which they have defended as necessary to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

“We salute our first responders and law enforcement, and we love them,” Trump said.