Just ahead of the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, officials confirmed the identification of two more victims who died at Ground Zero.
Monday, September 11, marks the 22nd anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and the hijacking and subsequent crash of Flight 93 over Pennsylvania.
The attacks ultimately left 2,977 people dead and many thousands more injured, according to the 9/11 Memorial Museum.
Two decades after the attack, officials are still working to identify victims. New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Jason Graham announced on September 8 that the remains of two more victims had been identified through advanced testing techniques.
These are the first victims identified by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) since 2021.
Recent developments in technology and methods, such as next-generation sequencing technology, have enabled investigators to generate these results. The same technology has been used to identify missing members of the U.S. military.
A press release by the City of New York stated that the newly identified remains were of a man and a woman. The names of these victims have not been made public at the family’s request.
These victims represent the 1,648th and 1,649th victims identified since 2001. The office reports that more than 1,100 people, or over 40% of those killed in the attack, have yet to be identified.
“As we prepare to mark the anniversary of September 11, our thoughts turn to those we lost on that terrible morning and their families who continue to live every day with the pain of missing loved ones,” Mayor Adams said in the press release. “We hope these new identifications can bring some measure of comfort to the families of these victims, and the ongoing efforts by the Office of Chief Medical Examiner attest to the city’s unwavering commitment to reunite all the World Trade Center victims with their loved ones.”
“More than 20 years after the disaster, these two new identifications continue to fulfill a solemn pledge that OCME made to return the remains of World Trade Center victims to their loved ones,” said Graham in the news release. “Faced with the largest and most complex forensic investigation in the history of our country, we stand undaunted in our mission to use the latest advances in science to serve this promise.”