WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump told a Pentagon ceremony on Friday that the United States would "never, ever forget" the dead of Sept. 11, 2001, as the country marked 25 years since hijackers flew four airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.

"In 25 years, a generation has passed since the terror attacks," Trump said, reading from teleprompters at the Defense Department memorial for the 184 people killed when American Airlines Flight 77 struck the building. "Yet time has not dimmed the honour of that day our country came face-to-face with true evil."

Nearly 3,000 people died that morning. About 2,700 were killed in New York when two planes hit the Twin Towers. Forty passengers and crew died on United Airlines Flight 93 after they fought the hijackers and the jet crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Families, first responders and officials gathered at all three sites. In Lower Manhattan, bells and silences marked the times the South Tower fell (9:59 a.m.), Flight 93 went down (10:03 a.m.) and the North Tower collapsed (10:28 a.m.).

Trump tied remembrance to current fighting. "We were all New Yorkers that day," he said. "But we're also all Americans." He praised troops "working right now to ensure the world's number one sponsor of terror, the Islamic Republic of Iran, will never, ever have a nuclear weapon."

"Today we renew the sacred oath that we first swore in their names a quarter of a century ago," he said. "We will never, ever forget. That's why we fight........

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