The United States is marking the 25th anniversary of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, with memorials and remembrance ceremonies being held across the country to honour the nearly 3,000 people killed on that day.
In New York City, the National September 11 Memorial and Museum is holding its annual commemoration ceremony, with families of the victims gathering at the 9/11 Memorial Plaza. Relatives are reading aloud the names of those killed in the 2001 attacks and in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, a tradition that has become the centrepiece of the annual observance.
The ceremonies come a quarter of a century after hijacked aircraft struck the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people and reshaped American domestic and foreign policy for a generation.
Friday's programme reflects the scale of the loss, with remembrance events planned in New York, at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania, the three sites where the hijacked planes went down. The New York ceremony remains the largest, drawing victims' families, first responders and officials to the memorial plaza built in the footprints of the fallen twin towers.
The reading of the names, carried out by family members, gives each victim a personal tribute rather than a collective statistic. This year's observance also recalls the six people killed in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, an attack that foreshadowed the destruction eight years later.
For Dominicans in the diaspora, particularly those living and working in the United States, the anniversary carries its own weight. Many families in the Caribbean have relatives who were in New York on the day of the attacks, and the annual ceremonies are followed closely across the region.
Twenty-five years on, the commemorations have become both a memorial and a moment of national reflection. The memorial and museum in Lower Manhattan, which opened a decade after the attacks, now serves as the permanent site of remembrance, preserving the names, photographs and personal effects of those who died.
The anniversary is being observed as the United States continues to debate the legacy of the attacks and the wars that followed. For the families gathered at the plaza, however, the focus remains on the reading of the names and the memory of those lost.
