New York remembers as last debris is removed from the World Trade Centre

"Closure" had been the word on everybody's lips. But when the time came to draw a line under the eight-and-a-half-month clean-up operation at Ground Zero yesterday, none of the civic dignitaries gathering in Manhattan's humid sunshine tried to pressure the city into moving on. No one said anything.

Several thousand onlookers stood in near-silence as an empty stretcher draped in an American flag was carried up the ramp used to move debris from the seven-storey-high crater day and night since September 11. Of the 2,823 people who died there, the remains of only 1,102 have been identified. The stretcher was meant to symbolise the others.

Starting at 10.29am, the time the second tower collapsed, it was carried past rows of site workers and uniformed officers and placed in a fire department ambulance. Behind it, an honour guard followed.

At the rear, a flatbed truck rumbled up the ramp, carrying the last girder to be removed, a 30-foot slab of steel shrouded in black and garlanded with flowers. The procession paused at the top for buglers to sound a tribute and for police and fire department pipe bands to play America the Beautiful.

It was probably a sign of New York's improving mood that the plans for the ceremony had descended into rancour. The mayor, Michael Bloomberg, was criticised by relatives' groups for scheduling it on a Thursday rather than a weekend. He said that Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays are awkward for Muslims, Jews and Christians. Some relatives will hold another ceremony on Sunday.

The mayor, his predecessor, Rudolph Giuliani, the New York state governor, George Pataki, and Senator Hillary Clinton attended, but the 20-minute event belonged to the bereaved families and the firefighters, police officers and construction workers who now face a potentially traumatising return to more mundane work.

Others will continue to sift debris on a landfill site in Staten Island, where they have yet to analyse, among other things, the rest of the 19,000 body parts found in the rubble.

In Washington, President George Bush thanked Ground Zero workers. "I want our nation to continue to offer our prayer to those families and friends and citizens who still hurt as a result of the attacks of September 11," he added.

Closure was never to be expected, said Monica Iken, who lost her husband in the attacks; his remains have never been found. She attended yesterday's ceremony before hurrying back to her work as an advocate for the bereaved families.

"Today was the first day their souls were at peace, because there was no construction going on - the first day," she said. "That's not a pit or a hole, that's Michael's final resting place. But there can't be any closure knowing that your husband went to work one day, said goodbye and never came home."