New York Remembers 9/11 Attacks

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, March 13, 2002

New York Remembers 9/11 Attacks

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Six months after two hijacked planes toppled the World Trade Center towers, the Sept. 11 attacks were marked Monday with silence, prayer and the dedication of a gashed spherical sculpture as a memorial to the dead.

After nightfall, two huge columns of light resembling the twin towers were to be beamed skyward from a lot next to ground zero in a second memorial to the dead. The "Tribute in Light," made up of 88 high-powered searchlights, will be displayed nightly until April 13.

During a ceremony at Battery Park, blocks from the trade center site, several hundred people paused for two moments of silence at 8:46 a.m. and 9:03 a.m., the precise times that two planes hit the towers and caused the catastrophe that killed 2,830 people.

Church bells rang across the city, and the names of the 23 police officers killed were read aloud at 8:30 a.m. at police precincts.

The 343 firefighters killed in the trade center were honored separately with a bell-ringing at the morning service, where a message from President Bush was also read. Guests, including many victims' relatives, were given yellow daffodils.

Bush marked the six-month point during a ceremony at the White House, joined by more than 100 ambassadors as well as relatives of some victims and members of Congress.

At the Pentagon, where 189 peopled died on Sept. 11, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld met with military leaders from the nations in the anti-terrorism coalition.

In Shanksville, Pa., church bells tolled at 10:06 a.m. in memory of the 44 victims of the crash of United Flight 93, the fourth hijacked jet that day. It went down in the countryside, apparently after some of the passengers fought back.

At Battery Park, city officials dedicated a sculpture damaged in the attack as a temporary memorial.

Across the city, at a Queens church, hundreds of firefighters attended the funeral of Richard D. Allen. The Fire Department has held 148 funerals in the six months since the attack.

The names of the victims from the trade center, the Pentagon and the plane crash in Pennsylvania were read aloud at St. Paul's Chapel in lower Manhattan. The church was a relief center during the months after the attack, and still serves breakfast to recovery workers digging through the rubble.

At ground zero, work stopped during the moments of silence.

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