22 years after the September 11, 2001 jihadist attacks on the United States, the remains of two victims killed in the World Trade Center towers in New York could be identified using DNA, authorities announced ahead of of a new commemoration. The identities of the two victims, a man and a woman, have not been released at the request of the families. They bring to 1,649 the number of people whose remains have been identified, out of a total of 2,753 deaths after an Al-Qaeda commando threw two airliners into the Twin Towers of Manhattan, the office said of New York Forensic Medicine (OCME).
“We hope these new identifications bring some comfort to the victims’ families, and the efforts of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner demonstrate the City’s unwavering commitment to reuniting all World Trade Center victims with their loved ones “, declared the city’s mayor, Democrat Eric Adams, in a press release on Friday.
1,104 victims have still not been identified, and the last two identifications date back to 2021. When the South Tower, then the North Tower, of the World Trade Center collapsed after the attack, the violence of the deluge of fire , steel and dust was such that no DNA trace was ever found for hundreds of dead. The two new identifications were made possible thanks to “recently adopted next-generation sequencing technology – more sensitive and faster than conventional DNA techniques” and used in particular by the US military, explains the OCME.
The attacks are commemorated each year in New York with official ceremonies, as will be the case on Monday. In total, the jihadists hijacked four planes, two of which hit the World Trade Center towers, one ripped apart part of the Pentagon near Washington, and another crashed in a wooded area of ??Shanksville, Pennsylvania. These attacks, the deadliest in history, left a total of 2,977 dead.
