NEW YORK, Sept 10: On the eve of the second anniversary of the Sept 11 attacks, Americans prepared on Wednesday to revisit the traumatic events that sent them to war, as the world remained on high terror alert.

One year after the highly emotional and media-saturated first anniversary of the attacks that changed the world, Thursday’s main ceremony of remembrance at New York’s Ground Zero will be a comparatively low-key affair.

But the legacy of Sept 11 is still ever-present, in the minds of the friends and relatives of those who died, in the scarred emptiness of the World Trade Center site, and in the US combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

There is also the persistent fear of further attacks around the globe, especially in New York City, which has remained on heightened alert for the past two years, and other terror-hit nations.

During the Ground Zero ceremony, children related to the victims will read the names of all those who perished when two hijacked airliners, allegedly manned by Al Qaeda operatives, slammed into the trade center’s twin towers, killing nearly 2,800 people.

Another hijacked plane crashed into the Pentagon, killing about 180 people, and a fourth airliner carrying 44 people crashed in Pennsylvania.

Participants at the ceremony will pause in silence four times — twice to mark the times that each hijacked plane hit the towers and twice to mark the times that each tower fell.

In the evening, powerful spotlights will send two shafts of light up into the night sky to symbolize the fallen twin towers.

President Bush, who had led the mourners in New York for the first anniversary, will not be at Ground Zero for this year’s ceremony, having opted to send Vice President Dick Cheney.

Instead, he will take part in a church prayer and remembrance service in Washington and hold a moment of silence on the South Lawn of the White House.

Although the attacks united the country in grief, they have proved a fertile ground for discord, with legal battles threatened over compensation payments and emotional arguments over plans to redevelop the World Trade Center site.

A US court ruled on Tuesday that families of the victims can take action for damages from the airlines, airport security officials, the plane manufacturer and the owner of the World Trade Center, accusing them of failing to provide better security.

Although the two years since have seen the capture of a number of top Al Qaeda leaders, only three people have been formally charged in connection with the attacks — and just one convicted.

The memory of Sept 11 was invoked by Mr Bush in an address to the nation on Sunday as he sought to justify the military intervention and continued US presence in Afghanistan and in Iraq, where US forces are being killed in almost daily guerilla attacks.

Mr Bush vowed there would be “no going back” to the era before Sept 11, 2001, which he described as one of “false comfort” in a dangerous world.

“The surest way to avoid attacks on our own people is to engage the enemy where he lives and plans,” he said.

The United States may be better prepared now than it was on the morning of Sept 11 two years ago, but the superpower is aware it has become an even bigger target for radical groups.

“Much of the sympathy expressed for America two years ago has been lost in the row over Bush’s Iraq policy,” said German newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

For the anniversary, security patrols will be stepped up in New York, but unlike last year the Department of Homeland Security has no plans to raise the alert level.

The CIA said Al Qaeda’s leadership was at “growing risk of breaking apart”, thrown into disarray not seen since the collapse of its Taliban protectors in Afghanistan in 2001, although the agency warned it still posed a threat.—AFP