Memorial Mass marks 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed 6, including 2 Long Islanders

Memorials are marking 33 years since the first attack on the World Trade Center, a bombing that killed six people, including two Long Islanders, and presaged 9/11.

A memorial Mass was celebrated on Thursday morning at St. Peter’s Church, blocks from the site, followed by a ceremony at the now-rebuilt complex where a bell tolled at 12:18 p.m.: the moment in 1993 when a terrorist truck bomb exploded.

At the Mass, Charles Maikish, the former director of the Port Authority’s World Trade Department, led the prayer of the faithful, to which those gathered responded: "Lord, hear our prayer."

He said he hoped "during this season of atonement, that the agents of terrorism and violence will come to see the futility of their ways and turn to the paths of peace and reconciliation."

The six people killed in the attack died almost instantly.

Two were Long Islanders: 35-year-old Monica Rodriguez Smith, who was weeks from giving birth and was working as a mechanical unit secretary for the Port Authority; and John DiGiovanni, 45, of Valley Stream, a sales manager for Kerr Chemicals.

More than 1,000 people were injured.

On Thursday at the trade center’s memorial reflecting pools around which names of the slain from 1993 and 2001 are etched, three Port Authority police officers stood sentry next to where the names of the six killed in 1993 are engraved.

The 1993 bombing, which foreshadowed the far deadlier attacks eight years later, was perpetrated by Islamic extremists indignant at U.S. entanglements in the Middle East, support for Israel and the killings of Palestinians. In letters sent to newspapers, the attackers demanded policy changes, such as ending that support.

Mastermind Ramzi Yousef called the attack "terror for terror."

He wanted the explosion to topple one tower, causing the collapsing debris to knock down the other tower.

He hoped to kill 250,000 Americans, a death toll modeled on what he thought to be fatalities from America’s World War II atomic bombings of Japan. (The actual death toll ranged from 110,000 to 210,000, according to a Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists estimate.)

Yousef was later convicted of planning the attack and sentenced to life imprisonment. Five accomplices also were convicted.

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.