New York to mark 25th anniversary of 9/11 attacks

Updated / Friday, Getty Almost 3,000 people died when planes were crashed into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and an open field in Pennsylvania New York will commemorate the 25th anniversary of the devastating attacks with a ceremony marked 's absence and right-wing outrage at the attendance of the city's first Muslim mayor. Mr Trump will pay his respects at the Pentagon, not New York, where hijacked planes destroyed the World Trade Center and killed most of the 2,977 total victims on that world-altering day. Vice President JD Vance and Mr Trump's four living predecessors - Republican George W Bush, who was in office during the attacks, and Democrats Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton - are all expected at the 'Ground Zero' site in lower Manhattan. No one will give speeches at the ceremony, while bereaved family members will read out the names of all of those killed and a bell rung to mark major moments during the attack. "Memorials like this, and discussions about those events, are an important part of keeping it alive and understanding how we prevent tragedies like this from ever happening again," said Robert Kafka, a Chicagoan in his 60s visiting the 9/11 Memorial. An improvised team of volunteers, firefighters, police and detection dogs found 21 people alive on the first day, but none thereafter Alongside the former presidents will be Democratic Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the Big Apple's first Muslim mayor, despite a campaign urging him to stay away spearheaded -wing New York Post and former mayor Rudy Giuliani. A petition, which has gathered more than 100,000 signatures, accuses Mr Mamdani of associating with unspecified individuals who are "dismissive of American institutions or insufficiently critical of extremist ideologies." "It's concerning to me that the mayor is being treated differently simply because he is Muslim," city council member Shahana Hanif told CNN. Mr Mamdani won plaudits, however, for recently revealing thousands of documents showing what city officials knew about toxicity levels of the air in Lower Manhattan following the attacks. After the initial dust cloud that followed the collapse of the World Trade Center, months of pollution and lingering dust ensued, causing cancers from which thousands of New Yorkers still suffer today. 'Toxic air' "People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air," Mr Mamdani said. 19 Al-Qaeda operatives hijacked four planes on that nearly cloudless day in 2001. Two jets slammed into the World Trade Center's Twin Towers, causing the iconic 110-story buildings to collapse.