US marks 20 years since 9/11, in shadow of Afghan war’s end

AMERICANS solemnly marked the 20th anniversary of 9/11 on Saturday, remembering the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil just weeks after the fraught end of the Afghanistan war that followed.

With a tolling bell and a moment of silence, the anniversary ceremony at ground zero in New York began exactly two decades after the attack started with the first of four hijacked planes crashing into one of the World Trade Center’s twin towers.

“It felt like an evil specter had descended on our world, but it was also a time when many people acted above and beyond the ordinary,” said Mike Low, whose daughter, Sara Low, was a flight attendant on that plane.

Her family has “known unbearable sorrow and disbelief” in the years since, the father told a crowd that included President Joe Biden and former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

But “as we carry these 20 years