NEW YORK (AP) — Marking Osama bin Laden's death where the terrorist inflicted his greatest damage, President Barack Obama visited the Manhattan firehouse that sustained the heaviest losses on Sept. 11 and proclaimed that bin Laden's death sends the message that "we will never forget."

"This is a symbolic site of the extraordinary sacrifice that was made on that terrible day," the president said Thursday after shaking hands with firefighters at Engine 54, Ladder 4, Battalion 9. The firehouse in New York's theater district lost 15 firefighters on Sept. 11, 2001.

As for the killing of bin Laden by U.S. commandos, Obama declared, "'When we say we will never forget, we mean what we say."