Mon, Sep 12, 2011 page1

• World marks 10 years since Sept. 11

  • Reuters and AP, NEW YORK and WELLINGTON
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  Americans yesterday remembered the horror of Sept. 11, 2001, and the nearly 3,000 people who died in the hijacked plane attacks, as authorities worked to ensure the emotional 10th anniversary was peaceful.

  Law enforcement authorities in New York and Washington were on high alert against what was described as a “credible but unconfirmed” threat of an al-Qaeda plot to attack the US again a decade after the toppling of the World Trade Center’s twin towers by hijacked airliners.

  Security was especially tight in Manhattan, where police set up vehicle checks on city streets as well as bridges and tunnels coming into the city. There was an unprecedented show of force in Manhattan from roadblocks on Times Square in midtown to the area around Ground Zero farther to the south.

  

  New York City police officer Danny Shea salutes at the North Pool of the National September 11 Memorial during the 10th anniversary ceremonies at the World Trade Center site in New York yesterday.

  Photo: Reuters

  Security in Lower Manhattan included police barricades on every block near the World Trade Center site, with police asking people for identification. People gathered near the site, some clutching US flags, to watch a large screen set up to show a remembrance ceremony here. Some wore T-shirts reading: “Never Forget,” a slogan popular since the attacks.

  “It was our Pearl Harbor,” said John McGillicuddy, 33, a teacher from Yonkers, New York, getting coffee and carrying two US flags on his way to the World Trade Center.

  Family members arrived wearing T-shirts with the faces of the dead, carrying photos, flowers, US flags and other mementos in an overwhelming outpouring of emotion.

  The memorial includes two plazas in the shape of the footprints of the Twin Towers with cascading 9.1m waterfalls. Around the perimeters of the pools are the names of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks and an earlier 1993 attack at the World Trade Center.

  US President Barack Obama visited the North Memorial Pool, which sits in the footprint of the north tower. Obama walked around the pool hand-in-hand with first lady Michelle Obama, former US president George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, as an eerie silence fell over Lower Manhattan, which was devoid of traffic and where construction stopped for the morning.

  In a somber moment, Obama touched the names of the dead, engraved in stone, before he greeted some family members and dignitaries ahead of the ceremony where he read from Psalm 46, which says: “God is our refuge and strength.”

  The centerpiece of the ceremony is the annual reading of the names of those who died on Sept. 11.

  Pope Benedict prayed for Sept. 11 victims and appealed to those with grievances to “always reject violence as a solution to problems and resist the temptation to resort to hate.”

  Meanwhile, ceremonies were held around the world to mark the anniversary of the attacks.

  From Sydney to Spain, formal ceremonies paid tribute to those who perished from more than 90 countries.

  In Malaysia, Pathmawathy Navaratnam woke up yesterday in her suburban Kuala Lumpur home and did what she has done every day for the past decade: wish her son Vijayashanker Paramsothy “Good morning.”

  The 23-year-old financial analyst was killed in the attacks on New York.

  “He is my sunshine. He has lived life to the fullest, but I can’t accept that he is not here anymore,” Navaratnam said. “I am still living, but I am dead inside.”

  In Manila, dozens of former shanty dwellers offered roses, balloons and prayers for another Sept. 11 victim, US citizen Marie Rose Abad. The neighborhood used to be a shantytown that reeked of garbage. However, in 2004, Abad’s Filipino-American husband, Rudy, built 50 brightly colored homes, fulfilling his late wife’s wish to help impoverished Filipinos.

  The village has since been named after her.

  “It’s like a new life sprang from the death of Marie Rose and so many others,” villager Nancy Waminal said.

  In Japan, families gathered in Tokyo to pay their respects to the 23 Fuji Bank employees who never made it out of their World Trade Center office. A dozen of the workers who died were Japanese.

  Rome was preparing to light up the Colosseum late yesterday in a show of solidarity and special commemorations were planned at Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral and London’s St Paul’s Cathedral.
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