US on code orange alert for tragic anniversary
America was on a major terror alert tonight as it prepared to commemorate the anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
US officials raised the warning for the first time to Code Orange, just one below the highest level of danger.
The FBI said there had been threats of a strike on New York and Washington, with transportation networks, power plants and banks all named as possible targets.
The US military is reported to have deployed anti-aircraft missiles at the Pentagon which could be moved from standby to full alert during tomorrow’s memorial service.
The September 11 anniversary "represents a potentially attractive target for terrorists", said an FBI official.
American embassies in Indonesia and Malaysia are also to shut tomorrow until further notice because of warnings of possible attacks.
A spokesman in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, said a "credible and specific threat" had been received.
The warnings came as final preparations were made for services across the US to remember the victims of last year’s attacks.
At Ground Zero workers busily constructed a wall inscribed with the names of the more than 2,800 people who died at the World Trade Centre which will be unveiled at tomorrow’s ceremony.
Cranes and diggers cleared the 16-acre area at the bottom of the giant pit where the twin towers once stood which victims’ relatives will descend for the first time during the service.
In the early hours of tomorrow New York police and firefighter pipe and drum bands gather in each of the city’s five boroughs and start a slow procession to Ground Zero.
A minute’s silence will be held at the site at 8.46am to mark the moment the first plane hit the World Trade Centre.
Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani will lead family members and a cross section of New Yorkers, and people from around the world, in reciting the name of each of the 2,801 victims.
Gordy Aamoth, who worked in the 104th floor of the South tower, will be the first name to be read out.
"I’m very pleased and impressed with how dignified, solemn and appropriate the service appears to be," said his mother, Mary Aamoth, who will watch the ceremony on television from her home in Minneapolis.
New York Governor George Pataki will read from the Gettysburg Address, President Abraham Lincoln’s speech after the major Civil War battle in 1863.
The recitation of the names will pause for readings by family members at 9.03 am, when the second plane struck, and 9.59am, when the first tower fell.
The last name to be read will be Igor Zukelman, 29, of New York, who worked at Fiduciary Trust Company International.
The ceremony will conclude with a reading from the Declaration of Independence by New Jersey Governor James McGreevey.
During the ceremony family members will descend the ramp that extends into the seven-storey-deep pit, where they can pick up a rose and place it in a vase for an arrangement that will be preserved for a permanent memorial.
It is the first time they will have been able to visit the exact spot where their loved ones died.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell, actor Robert De Niro and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton will also be at the ceremony.
