Britain marked the anniversary of the September 11 attacks on Wednesday with an impressive service at St Paul’s Cathedral, attended by members of the victims' families, the Prince of Wales, Prince Harry and Prime Minister Tony Blair. As a minute’s silence was held across the UK, relatives of US World Trade Center victims gathered for a special memorial at Ground Zero in New York.
For Americans, the day that President Bush called “a day of tears and a day of prayer” began in New York with a procession of bagpipers and drummers who at dawn began a march from Queens to the area where the World Trade Center once stood. There, the families of victims who died in the Twin Towers collapse gathered at the site for the first time, laying flowers that will be preserved for a permanent memorial at the centre of the grounds.
At 8:46am New York time – the hour and minute that the first plane hit the WTC one year ago – President Bush, in Washington DC, led a minute’s silence, which was simultaneously held thousands of miles away at St Paul’s Cathedral. During the special church service in the English capital, to honour the 67 British citizens killed in the tragedy, 3,000 white rose petals representing the lives lost fluttered down from the Cathedral’s Whispering Gallery as two symbolic candles burned.
As the memorial ceremony came to a close in London, across the Atlantic a solemn reading of the names of each of the 2,801 people who died in the New York attacks continued, and bells tolled for each of the victims of Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania.
At sunset, President Bush, who was set to travel to all three attack locations – New York, Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon – was to light an eternal flame in lower Manhattan, where The Sphere, a battered sculpture which once stood between the two skyscrapers, now serves as a memorial.
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
