Relatives Attend Emotional Ground Zero Service

Hundreds of relatives of the victims of the World Trade Centre attack attended an emotional ceremony today to mark the end of the recovery operation at Ground Zero.

The service, marking the end of the eight-and-a-half month cleanup after the September 11 attack, began with a fire department bell sounding out the fire code - four sets of five rings, in memory of the 343 fallen firefighters lost at Ground Zero.

The first bell rang at precisely 10:29am (3.29pm BST), the time that the second tower collapsed.

An empty stretcher draped in the US flag was slowly carried from the seven-storey crater where the twin towers once stood to symbolise those whose remains were never found.

Emergency workers saluted as it was loaded into an ambulance and then drummed out of the area by a police and firefighter pipe band. It was followed by a 30ft steel column, the final piece of debris at the site, which was taken up the ramp by lorry.

"This is the closest point I guess I can get to being with him again," said David Bauer III, whose father - a Cantor Fitzgerald worker - was one of the more than 1,700 victims for whom no remains have been identified.

Hundreds of people began gathering at the site more than an hour before the service. "It was tough to come here every day and now it's tough to leave," firefighter John Keating said.

Of the more than 2,800 people killed in the attack, the remains of 1,102 have been identified. Nearly 20,000 body parts have been recovered.

City officials said the sifting for body parts in a landfill and the identification process will go on for months. Those human remains that cannot be identified will be retained, in case new technology makes identification possible in the future.

Before the ceremony, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg appeared on NBC television's Today show. "The fact of the matter is the people that survived are the ones that we have to go on," he said. "We have to make sure they do not forget and that they build for the future."

The cleanup effort finished several months earlier than originally anticipated and at a fraction of the estimated cost. But while many victims have been identified, the end of the operation leaves numerous others without their family members' remains.

Several family groups had asked Mr Bloomberg to schedule the service on a weekend, so that work and school schedules would not be disrupted. The mayor said the city avoided the weekend so it would not conflict with religious observances.

To accommodate those who could not attend the ceremony, the family groups have planned their own service at Ground Zero on Sunday.

What to do with the site after the ceremony is under discussion. Control of the site will revert from the city to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the land.

The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the agency charged with rebuilding the World Trade Centre site, has received $2bn (£1.4bn) in federal funds to decide what to do with the 16 acres at Ground Zero.

Last week, the Port Authority and the development agency announced the choice of architectural firm Beyer Blinder Belle as the urban planning consultant that will assist their staffs in producing a plan.

Beyer Blinder Belle will submit up to six proposals by July 1. Those will be narrowed to three or fewer by September 1 and a final blueprint is to be chosen by December 1.