Bells toll as US marks 22 years since 9/11 terror attacks, from ground zero to Alaska
Published:Monday | September 11, 2023 | 9:14 AM
NEW YORK (AP) — With tolling bells, personal tributes, and tears, Americans looked back Monday on 9/11 at anniversary observances that stretched from ground zero to small towns.
People gathered at memorials, firehouses, city halls, campuses and elsewhere to observe the 22nd anniversary of the deadliest terror attack on US soil.
“For those of us who lost people on that day, that day is still happening. Everybody else moves on. And you find a way to go forward, but that day is always happening for you,” Edward Edelman said as he arrived at ground zero to honour his slain brother-in-law, Daniel McGinley.
President Joe Biden was due at a ceremony on a military base in Anchorage, Alaska.
His visit, en route to Washington from a trip to India and Vietnam, is a reminder that the impact of 9/11 was felt in every corner of the nation, however remote.
Nearly 3,000 people were killed when hijacked planes crashed into New York's World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, in an attack that reshaped American foreign policy and domestic fears.
On that day, “we were one country, one nation, one people, just like it should be. That was the feeling — that everyone came together and did what we could, where we were at, to try to help,” said Eddie Ferguson, the fire-rescue chief in Virginia's Goochland County.
It's more than 100 miles (160 kilometres) from the Pentagon and more than three times as far from New York. But a sense of connection is enshrined in a local memorial incorporating steel from the World Trade Center's destroyed twin towers.
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