9/11 anniversary: Unity is our greatest strength, says Biden

US President Joe Biden says national unity is the United States’ greatest strength.

Biden said this in a video posted on Friday to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

A series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by the Islamist extremist group, al-Qaeda, through plane hijackings, occurred on September 11, 2011.

The attacks, often referred to as 9/11, resulted in the death of more than 2,500 people.

The plane hijackings are the single worst attack on US soil in the country’s history.

Speaking on the eve of the 9/11 anniversary, Biden commended Americans for staying united.

“In the days that followed September 11, 2001, we saw heroism everywhere; in places expected and unexpected,” he said.

“We also saw something all too rare: a true sense of national unity; unity and resilience; the capacity to recover and repair in the face of trauma.

“In the battle for the soul of America, unity is our greatest strength. Unity doesn’t mean we have to believe the same thing, but we must have a fundamental respect and faith in each other and in this nation.

“The 9/11 generation is stepping up to serve and protect in the face of terror; to show everyone seeking to do harm to America that we will hunt you down and we will make you pay. That will never stop.”

Biden also acknowledged the “darker forces of human nature: fear and anger, resentment and violence against Muslim Americans, true and faithful followers of a peaceful religion”, which he said had bent, but not broken American unity.

“To me, that’s the central lesson of September 11; that at our most vulnerable, in the push and pull of all that makes us human, and the battle for the soul of America, unity is our greatest strength,” he said.

“Unity doesn’t mean we have to believe the same thing. We must have a fundamental respect and faith in each other, and in this nation.”

The US White House said, the president and the first lady would, on Saturday, “honor and memorialise the lives lost, with travel to all three sites of the 9/11 attacks”.