By IANS,
Washington: US Vice President Joe Biden and Defence Secretary Leon Panetta Sunday vowed to relentlessly pursue the Al Qaeda until it is dismantled, as they observed the 10th anniversary of the Sep 11, 2001 attacks at the Pentagon.
A moment of silence at 9.37 a.m. marked the exact time the Pentagon was hit by a hijacked plane a decade ago, an attack that killed 184 people, Xinhua reported.
At the Pentagon Memorial, 184 soldiers each laid a single wreath of white flowers on 184 wing-shaped benches one by one, on which the names of the dead were inscribed.
“You will not stop until Al Qaeda is not only disrupted, but completely dismantled and ultimately destroyed,” Biden said of the US military fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.
He noted the “incredible price” the military has paid for the wars, including 4,478 troops fallen in Iraq, 1,648 in Afghanistan, and more than 40,000 wounded in both countries, some of whom will require “care and support the rest of their lives”.
Panetta said: “To this day, and by these memorials to each victim, we pledge to never forget the enemy that made this happen, why we fight them, and why we will never stop fighting them to make sure that what happened here and in New York City and in the field in Pennsylvania never happens again.”