Relatives and families of the victims of the World Trade Center (WTC) attacks are expected Wednesday to commemorate the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, which left 3,000 dead and more than 6,000 injured in the collapse of the WTC in New York.
They will gather on the site renamed Ground Zero, while Donald Trump will deliver a speech from the Pentagon, where he will be joined in the afternoon by the former US President at the time of the attacks, George W. Bush.
Vice President Mike Pence is expected to speak at the scene of the third 9/11 terrorist attack near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Attack on the US embassy in Kabul
Eighteen years after the most deadly attacks on US soil, the United States continues to live with the consequences of these terrorist acts on a daily basis. In US airports, security controls remain strict, while in Afghanistan, the US military is still the target of many attacks.
In the early hours of the anniversary of a terrorist attack, a rocket hit a wall of the Afghan Ministry of Defense, close to the US embassy.
In Afghanistan, 9/11 triggered US intervention against the country-based Al-Qaeda organization and the then-Taliban in Kabul. This is the longest war waged by the United States outside of their soil. Several thousand American soldiers are still mobilized in the country, even if their number has decreased sharply.
The shadow of cancer hovers over 9/11
Another consequence of September 11 in New York, well over thousands of victims, the city continues to count people with cancer and other serious diseases, including lungs, related to the toxic cloud that hovered for weeks on the south of Manhattan.
The tens of thousands of firefighters and volunteers mobilized on the site were the first affected: as early as 2011, a study published in the scientific journal The Lancet showed that they faced increased risks of cancer. Some 10,000 of them have been diagnosed with cancer by the WTC Health Program, a federal treatment program for survivors of the attacks.
With AFP and AP