Although 22 years have passed since the attack on the Twin Towers in the United States, the identity of more than a thousand victims is still unknown. However, efforts to return their names continue today. In that sense, last Friday The remains of two people who died in the World Trade Center collapse were identified.
The bodies belonged to a man and a woman, whose identities were withheld at the request of their relatives. That way, The number of victims who were identified rises to 1,649of the total of 2,753 who died when an Al-Qaeda commando crashed two hijacked civilian planes into the Twin Towers in New York.
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“We hope that these new identifications can provide some comfort to the families of these victims, and the continued efforts of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner attest to the city’s unwavering commitment to reuniting all victims of the World Trade Center with their loved ones,” said New York Mayor Eric Adams.
According to authorities, the individuals were identified through advanced genetic testing, specifically thanks to the use of “next generation sequencing technology, more sensitive and faster than conventional DNA techniques”. These techniques are the same as those used by the US military to recognize the remains of its missing soldiers.
In the case of the man, work was done on remains that were recovered in 2001, while those of the woman were found in 2001, 2006 and 2013. These are the first identifications that have been made since September 2021.
“More than 20 years after the disaster, these two new identifications continue to fulfill a solemn promise made by the OCME (Office of the Chief Medical Examiner) to return the remains of World Trade Center victims to their loved ones. Before the largest and most complex forensic investigation in the history of our country“We remain undaunted in our mission to use the latest advances in science to fulfill this promise,” said Chief Medical Examiner Jason Graham.
Despite the progress, There are still 1,104 unidentified victims, which is equivalent to around 40% of those killed in the attack. In that sense, the attack was of such magnitude that no trace of DNA from hundreds of dead was ever found. Human remains from the attack are stored at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the site of the World Trade Center.
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