SYDNEY (Reuters) – Thousands gathered across Australia and New Zealand on Friday for Anzac Day, a public holiday commemorating military service members who fought and died during wartime.
Anzac Day originally marked the nations’ role in an ultimately unsuccessful campaign to capture the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey during World War One, which resulted in 130,000 deaths on both sides of the conflict.
In a key episode on April 25, 1915, thousands of troops from the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) took part in an ill-fated amphibious invasion by British Empire forces on the area’s narrow beaches.
Today, Anzac Day honours all Australian and New Zealand troops who have served in conflict.
Around 7,500 people on Friday attended a dawn service in Australia’s largest city, Sydney, the Australian Broadcasting Corp reported, before the annual march of military veterans through the centre of the New South Wales state capital.
Other major services marking the day, a nationwide public holiday, were held at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, as well as in state capitals Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide and Hobart.
“It is now a century and a decade since the first Anzacs climbed into their boats and rowed into history,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a statement. “The years come and go, and still we come together to honour them and all who have followed.”
In New Zealand, which contributed about one in six troops to the Gallipoli campaign, memorials also took place, including a large service at the country’s war memorial in the capital, Wellington.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, at Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey for Anzac Day, said he had visited battlefields and cemeteries in the area where around 2,800 New Zealanders died during the failed campaign.
“Nothing in my life has been quite as humbling and moving as walking in the footsteps of the ANZACs,” Luxon said on X.
(Reporting by Sam McKeith in Sydney; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
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