America marks 25th anniversary of 9/11 with solemn ceremonies across nation

Twenty-five years after hijacked planes struck the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania, the United States paused on September 11th to mark the anniversary with ceremonies that drew sitting and former presidents, cabinet officials, and thousands of ordinary Americans bound by loss and memory.

At the World Trade Center site in Manhattan, Vice President JD Vance stood alongside all four living former presidents—George W. Bush, who was in office when the attacks occurred; Joe Biden; Barack Obama; and Bill Clinton—as the names of nearly 3,000 people killed in the attacks were read aloud over nearly four hours. Moments of silence punctuated the ceremony at the precise times each of the four hijacked planes had crashed and when the Twin Towers fell. Two beams of light swept across the Manhattan sky that evening in the Tribute in Light, while landmarks across New York glowed blue in remembrance. At the Pentagon, President Donald Trump attended a separate ceremony with cabinet secretaries and Condoleezza Rice, who served as national security adviser on the day of the attacks. "Today we renew the sacred oath that we first swore in their names a quarter of a century ago," Trump said. "We will never, ever forget."

This year's observance introduced a new element to the ritual. A seventh bell was rung for the first time, marking not those who died in the immediate attacks but the thousands who have since died from illnesses linked to exposure to dust and smoke from the towers' collapse. According to US health officials, diseases including cancer have claimed more than 9,000 lives among survivors and responders—more than triple the death toll from the attacks themselves. The addition of that seventh bell acknowledged a cost that has accumulated silently over the past quarter century, a secondary catastrophe that has unfolded in hospitals and homes across the country.

Janice Brooks, who had arrived in New York just two weeks before the attacks to begin work on the 84th floor of the South Tower, was in her office when the first plane struck the North Tower. As she evacuated, the second plane hit with what she described as an "almighty thud." She heard screams—"one of those horror film screams," she told the BBC—as a woman nearby was struck by debris. Looking up, she saw the gaping hole where her office had been.

As the names continued to be read, Terry Strada, national chairperson of 9/11 Families United and widow of Tom Strada, stepped forward with a question that has persisted across the quarter century. "You are missed more with each year that passes," she said of her husband, her words broadcast worldwide. "But how can it be 25 years and still we have no justice for the role that Saudi Arabia played in your murder?" The majority of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals, and the attacks were planned by al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, a member of a prominent Saudi family. Saudi Arabia has repeatedly denied any involvement, and the 2004 9/11 Commission Report found no evidence that the Saudi government or senior Saudi officials had funded al-Qaeda. Yet for many families of the dead, the absence of accountability remains a wound that has not closed.

Commemoratives extended far beyond American soil. In London, the Foreign Secretary and the US ambassador attended a ceremony at Buckingham Palace. In Milan, Italian and American firefighters climbed 110 floors up and down the Galfa Tower in full gear, honoring the emergency responders who died in the line of duty. In Gander, Newfoundland, the US ambassador to Canada praised the small town that had taken in thousands of passengers from 38 diverted planes in the hours after the attacks. "When people in America hear the word Gander, our hearts soften," Pete Hoekstra said. His remarks came amid strained relations between the US and Canada, locked in a trade war, and some Gander residents had called for his invitation to be withdrawn. Yet his speech was met with applause. Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien followed with his own message: "I have a message for American friends... never mistake our generosity for weakness." He received a standing ovation.

The ceremonies held the familiar architecture of remembrance—the reading of names, the moments of silence, the symbolic light. But they also carried forward the unresolved questions that have shadowed the past 25 years: questions of accountability, of the hidden costs of survival, of how a nation continues to reckon with an attack that reshaped its foreign policy, its security apparatus, and the lives of millions.