After 22 years of the jihadist attacks of September 11, 2001 against the United States, the remains of two victims murdered in the towers of the World Trade Center in New York could be identified through DNA, as announced by the authorities as a new commemoration.
The identities of the two victims, a man and a woman, have not been revealed at the request of the families. The number of people whose remains have been identified rises to 1,649, out of a total of 2,753 dead after an Al Qaeda commando crashed two passenger planes into the Twin Towers in Manhattan, according to the New York Medical Office (OCME). ).
"We hope these new identifications provide some comfort to the families of the victims, and the efforts of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner demonstrate the city's unwavering commitment to reunite all World Trade Center victims with their loved ones." said the city's mayor, Democrat Eric Adams, in a statement.
1,104 victims have not yet been identified and the last two date back to 2021. When the south tower and 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 trace of DNA from hundreds of dead was ever found.
The two new identifications were possible thanks to "a 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 every year in New York with official ceremonies, as will be the case next Monday. In total, the jihadists hijacked four planes, two of which hit the World Trade Center towers, another destroyed part of the Pentagon near Washington and the last crashed in a wooded area of Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
These attacks, the deadliest in history, left a total of 2,977 dead.
