Washington (US), September 5: US President Joe Biden will go to New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the White House announced one week ahead of the planned visit.
"On Saturday, September 11, the President and the First Lady [Jill Biden] will honor and memorialize the lives lost 20 years ago with travel to all three sites of the 9/11 attacks: New York City, New York, Shanksville, Pennsylvania and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia," the White House said on Saturday.
According to the release, US Vice President Kamala Harris and the Second Gentleman Douglas Emhof will travel to Shanksville for a separate event, and will then join Biden and his wife at the Pentagon.
On Friday, Biden issued an executive order initiating an interagency review to possibly declassify certain documents related to the September 11 terrorist attacks. The executive order requires the attorney general to release the declassified documents publicly over the next six months.
The families of the 9/11 victims have long pushed the US government to declassify information related to the links Saudi Arabia may have had to the terrorists who carried out the attacks.
On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda* terrorists crashed two hijacked commercial planes in the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York, while another plane hit the Pentagon near Washington, DC. The fourth hijacked aircraft fell down in the state of Pennsylvania.
The US launched "Operation Enduring Freedom" following the attacks, and then-President George W. Bush announced airstrikes targeting al-Qaeda and the Taliban* in Afghanistan. The Taliban had refused to extradite al-Qaeda members after the 9/11 tragedy, which killed over 2,970 people.
The last of the US forces departed Afghanistan in the early hours of August 31. More than 25,000 Afghan refugees evacuated from Afghanistan after the Taliban took over are now being housed at US military bases.
Source: Sputnik
