Tension over lack of respect for 9/11 victims at memorial site in New York

Tensions over how to pay proper respect to the dead are overshadowing New York's memorial at Ground Zero as a gap widens between survivors and the general, more forgetful public 11 years after 9/11.

A day before the latest annual remembrance of the cataclysm that saw hijacked airliners flown into the World Trade Centre's Twin Towers, the once overwhelming sense of national solidarity appears to have faded.

At the sombre site marking the spot where over 2,600 people were killed on September 11, 2001 out of a total of nearly 3,000 dead, police, private security guards and volunteer guides are enforcing strict rules on decorum.

The measures are aimed at curbing what some relatives of victims see as rising disrespect, ranging from picnics under the newly planted oak trees to an incident in June when high school pupils threw rubbish into one of the black pools marking the footprints of the fallen towers.

Signs insisting on good behaviour are everywhere around the huge pools and bronze panels inscribed with the names of the dead. "If you see anyone scratching, sitting on or otherwise damaging the names panel, please alert memorial staff," reads one such notice.

Nothing like serious vandalism has occurred, but even the most seemingly benign activities, such as thousands of tourists snapping photos of each other in front of the monument, are too much for relatives who refer to the site as "sacred ground".

"People laughed and took pictures smiling, and so many people leaned on the tablets with all my friends' names engraved in them, holding Starbucks' cups, like it was a kitchen table," said Marianne Pizzitola, head of a fire department retirees group, in a letter to the memorial's president, Joe Daniels.