NEW YORK, Sept 12, (AP): With presidential candidates looking on, some 9/11 victims’ relatives appealed to them Wednesday for accountability as the US marked an anniversary laced with election-season politics. In a remarkable tableau, President Joe Biden, former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris stood together at ground zero just hours after Trump and Harris faced off in their first-ever debate.

Trump and Biden - the successor whose inauguration Trump skipped - shook hands, and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg appeared to facilitate a handshake between Harris and Trump. Then the campaign rivals stood only a few feet (meters) apart, Biden and Bloomberg between them, as the hourslong reading of victims' names began.

At Trump’s side was his running mate, Sen. JD Vance. The image was one of putting politics aside at this year's solemn commemoration of the hijacked-plane attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001. But some victims' relatives, after reading out names, delivered political messages of their own. "We are pleading for your help, but you ignore us,” Allison Walsh-DiMarzio said, directly challenging Trump and Harris to press Saudi Arabia about any official involvement in the attacks.

Most of the 19 hijackers were Saudi, but the kingdom denies it was behind their plot. "Which one of you will have the courage to be our hero? We deserve better,” Walsh-DiMarzio said. She’s a daughter of 9/11 victim Barbara P. Walsh, an administrative assistant. Joanne Barbara was one of multiple readers who spoke out against a now-revoked plea deal that military prosecutors struck with alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two fellow defendants. "It has been 23 years, and the families deserve justice and accountability,” said the widow of Assistant Fire Chief Gerard A. Barbara.