Many loved ones of the nearly 3,000 people killed will join dignitaries and politicians at commemorations Thursday in New York, at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
On Thursday morning, Denise Matuza, Jennifer Nilsen and Michelle Pizzo boarded a bus from Staten Island for Lower Manhattan — each wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the names and faces of their husbands, who died in the attack.
“Even 24 years later, it’s heart wrenching,” said Nilsen, whose husband, Troy Nilsen, worked at Cantor Fitzgerald on the 103rd floor of the World Trade Center. “It feels the same way every year.”
Moments of silence will mark the exact times when hijacked planes struck the World Trade Center's iconic twin towers, as well as when the skyscrapers fell.
At the Pentagon in Virginia, the 184 service members and civilians killed when hijackers steered a jetliner into the headquarters of the U.S. military will be honored. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump will attend the service before heading to the Bronx for a baseball game between the New York Yankees and Detroit Tigers Thursday evening.
And in a rural field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, a similar ceremony marked by moments of silence, the reading of names and the laying of wreaths, will honor the victims of Flight 93, the hijacked plane that crashed after crew members and passengers tried to storm the cockpit. That service will be attended by Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins.
In all, the attacks by al-Qaida militants killed 2,977 people, including many financial workers at the World Trade Center and firefighters and police officers who had rushed to the burning buildings trying to save lives.
The attacks reverberated globally and altered the course of U.S. policy, both domestically and overseas. It led to the " Global War on Terrorism" and the U.S.-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistanand related conflicts.
