DPA/New York


Workers unveil a US flag over a construction site at the Four World Trade Center ahead of the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York
Victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks will be remembered today at a new World Trade Center where workers are completing the last floors of the main 104-storey-tower.
US officials and selected family members of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the US on September 11, 2001, will meet at dawn in Lower Manhattan to remember them in a commemorative service held each year on the anniversary to mark the tragic event.
The names of all the victims will be read, including 2,740 in New York and the other people killed at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and top US officials in New York and New Jersey will be present, but none of them will deliver speeches.
The low-key anniversary in New York, like in past years, will focus on remembering the dead. Similar services will take place in Washington and Shanksville. President Barack Obama will attend a ceremony at the White House’s South Lawn this morning.
“This anniversary is about them,” Obama said in a radio address on Saturday. “It’s also a time to reflect on just how far we’ve come as a nation these past 11 years.”
The attacks “brought out the best in the American people,” Obama said, noting the more than 5mn men and women who have volunteered to serve in the military since the attacks.
The World Trade Center site is no longer referred to as Ground Zero, the name it had been given after 2001 to describe the massive destruction caused by the terrorist attacks.
New high-rise buildings and office-business towers have been sprouting at the site in the past years, costing more than $10bn. Last year, the National September 11 Memorial and Museum opened to the public and some 4.5mn people have visited in the past year. Names of all the victims have been etched on the walls of the memorial.
One World Trade Center, known as Freedom Tower, will open in 2014 with its 3mn sq ft of office space being filled with some of the world largest Corps.
The tower will reach the height of 1,776ft (592m), symbolic for the year 1776 when the US adopted the Declaration of Independence from Britain.