US President Donald Trump is set to mark the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks by attending a ceremony at the Pentagon on Friday, honouring the victims of an assault that reshaped American foreign policy and national security.
Nearly 3,000 people were killed when Al Qaeda hijackers crashed planes into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon and a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, in 2001.
The attacks were a catalyst for America’s so-called “War on Terror”, which included the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and led to the deaths of an estimated 4.5 to 4.7 million people, according to Brown University’s Cost of War project.
Vice President JD Vance is expected to join former presidents at the New York commemoration, while other administration officials will attend the ceremony in Shanksville.
Trump will mark the anniversary at the Pentagon for the second consecutive year. The president, who is originally from New York, last attended the ground zero ceremony there in 2024.
On Wednesday, Trump issued a proclamation designating the anniversary as “Patriot Day 2026”, recounting the attacks and pledging to strengthen the country’s defences.
At an event near the White House on Tuesday, he vowed to “never forget” the victims, describing the attacks as one of the few moments in history that "divide time into really what came before" and after.
At a Republican event in Dallas on Thursday night, victims’ families joined uniformed firefighters onstage as “Ave Maria” played. The victims’ names appeared on a screen, and a bell rang in tribute to the firefighters who lost their lives.
