Reuters, New York
Until a few months ago, the part of New York City where crowds will gather on Thursday morning to mark the 13th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States had been mostly fenced off to the public.
This year, for perhaps the first time since the attacks, a sense of normalcy and openness has taken root in the city blocks where two airliners hijacked by militants from al Qaeda crashed into the World Trade Center’s twin towers.
Rebuilding efforts at the site, where 2,753 people died, are nearing completion. The area, by turns a smoldering grave and an off-limits construction site for more than a decade, is now increasingly reconnected with the surrounding streets.
Against that backdrop, politicians, families of those who died in the attacks and other dignitaries will gather on Thursday to observe moments of silence and hear recitations of nearly 3,000 victims’ names. It has become an annual ritual.
Similar ceremonies will also be held in Washington, where a hijacked plane plowed into the Pentagon, and the field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where another hijacked plane crashed.
