Mike Massaroli, the son of a 9/11 victim Michael Massaroli, has delivered a powerful speech to conclude the annual reading of the names of those killed in a series of four coordinated attacks in the US, urging the politicians and public to stop using the event to spread hatred against Muslims.
Ceremonies were held in New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia to commemorate the nearly 3,000 lives lost in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
In New York, all living former presidents attended the ceremony at ground zero, where the victims' names were read. This year's ceremony included a moment of silence for those who have died of illnesses in the aftermath of the attacks.
The reading of the names, however, concluded with powerful words from Massaroli who spoke out out against hate.
"The one parting thing I wanna leave everyone with is that you do my dad's legacy and the legacies of all these victims no honour by using this tragedy to spread hate," Massaroli exhorted.
"We have seen a medley of people come up today of all races, all religions, all creeds, and this tragedy is just that, it’s a tragedy."
Massaroli, who was six when his father was killed, added that he had spent 25 years watching people invoke 9/11 "to hate on our Muslim brothers and sisters, to hate on people who don’t look like them, and that’s wrong, and that does no honour to the victims here."
A small anti-Islam protest gathered at City Hall and marched towards Ground Zero, flanked by a heavy police presence and counter-protesters.
Michael Massaroli, a vice-president at Cantor Fitzgerald, a financial services firm, was one of more than 600 employees who was killed following the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City.
Millions killed in 9/11 wars
Vice President JD Vance and US President Donald 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 — attended the event at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan.
Trump paid his respects at the Pentagon.
Nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four airliners on the nearly cloudless autumn day in 2001.
Two of the jets slammed into the World Trade Center's Twin Towers, causing the iconic skyscrapers to collapse.
A third plane struck the Pentagon, while a fourth — believed to have been aiming for Congress or the White House — went down in Pennsylvania after passengers and crew members stormed the cockpit and fought the hijackers.
The attacks served as a catalyst for the so-called US-led "war on terror", which included the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and resulted in the deaths of an estimated 4.5 to 4.7 million people, according to Brown University's Costs of War project.
