Moment of silence begins 7th annual commemoration of 9/11

Sep 11, 2008, 13:01 GMT

A US military soldier walks through a field of American flags placed near the Pentagon to memorialize the victims, in Arlington, Virginia, USA, 11 September 2008. US President George W. Bush will dedicate the Pentagon 9/11 memorial later this morning. The Pentagon memorial honours the 184 people killed in the building and on American Airlines Flight 77. EPA/MATTHEW CAVANAUGH

Washington/New York - The seventh commemoration of the 2001 terrorist attacks on Washington and New York began Thursday morning with a nationwide solemn moment of silence at 8:46 am, the time that one of four hijacked passenger planes smashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York.

Family members of the more than 2,500 who died in New York gathered outside the site of Ground Zero, where the towers once stood, and prepared to descend into what is now a construction site.

Children of the dead and other relatives started reading the names of the victims.

In Washington, US President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney stood quietly on the White House lawn for the sombre moment, along with their wives. Bush was to then head to the Pentagon, where the first completed memorial to the 9/11 dead was to be dedicated Thursday morning.

In the attacks, Islamic terrorists hijacked four passenger planes and attacked the symbols of US financial and military might. The first two planes were crashed into the two world trade centers, the third plane into the Pentagon in Washington and a fourth plane was crashed in Pennsylvania after a struggle between the captives and captors.

'This is the seventh anniversary of the day our world was broken,' Mayor Michael Bloomberg told family members gathered in New York. 'It is a tragedy that unites us in common memory.'

He noted that the nearly 3,000 dead from the four attacks included people from 95 nations and territories.