New York marks 9/11 attacks against divided backdrop

Flowers are placed on victims' names at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum on September 10, 2025, in New York City. The nation will commemorate the twenty-fourth anniversary of the attacks on September 11, 2001, which killed 2,977 people at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and those aboard Flight 93 in Shanksville, PA. (AFP)

New York prepared to mark the devastating attacks of September 11, 2001 on Thursday, 24 years after the deadly plane hijackings that claimed almost 3,000 lives and forever changed the United States.

Vice President JD Vance was expected to attend memorial events at Ground Zero in Manhattan where the World Trade Center's twin towers were destroyed in coordinated attacks that also saw a jetliner crashed into the nerve center of American military power, the Pentagon in Washington.

Another jet, Flight 93, crashed into the Pennsylvania countryside when passengers overran the hijacker and took control of the aircraft.

This year’s gathering takes place against a backdrop of sharp political division both in the city and nationally.

New York is in the grip of an unprecedented mayoral election campaign in which socialist Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani is facing off against former governor Andrew Cuomo and sitting mayor Eric Adams.

New Yorkers go to the polls on November 4.

It was unclear which of the mayoral candidates would attend the ceremony that is always attended by the sitting mayor as well as community leaders.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked Mamdani, a Muslim and naturalized US citizen, calling him a "communist lunatic,” while one Republican lawmaker has called for the race’s frontrunner to be deported.

Mamdani holds a 22 point lead in the race, according to the latest polling from The New York Times and Siena.

“It was this horrific day that was also for many New Yorkers the moment at which they were marked an ‘other,’” Mamdani told The Times, describing the surge in Islamophobic attacks that followed 9/11.

It was unclear if Trump would attend New York’s commemorative events as he has in years past.

The United States has faced a rash of political violence in recent months, with the killing of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk following the targeted killing of a Democratic Minnesota lawmaker and her husband and the firebombing of a Democratic governor’s residence.

New York will mark a citywide moment of silence at 8:46 a.m. (1246 GMT), the time that hijacked Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

Places of worship across the city will sound their bells to mark the impact as families of the victims read the names of those killed at ground zero.

The official death toll was 2,977 including the passengers and crew of the four hijacked planes, victims in the twin towers, firefighters, and personnel at the Pentagon. The death toll excludes the 19 Al-Qaeda hijackers.