The remains of two victims who were killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center have been identified days ahead of the 22nd anniversary, according to New York City officials.
A man and a woman, whose names are being withheld at their families’ request, are the latest to have been positively identified by the city’s Medical Examiner’s Office in a decades-long effort to return victims to their families, Mayor Eric Adams’ office announced Friday.
The two are the 1,648 and 1,649th victims identified by the ME through a meticulous process using DNA sequencing on human remains recovered from the rubble of the Lower Manhattan attack that claimed the lives of 2,753 people.
They are the first victims positively identified since 2021.
“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,” Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Jason Graham said in a statement.
“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,” he added.
After years of negative DNA results, the OCME recently began using state-of-the-art, highly sensitive sequencing technology used by the US military to identify the remains of missing American servicemembers, which has yielded more positive identifications.
Similar efforts are underway to identify body fragments from the more than 100 people killed in last month’s Maui wildfires.
The ME’s office confirmed the identity of the man through DNA testing of remains recovered in 2001. The identification of the woman was confirmed through DNA testing of remains recovered in 2001, 2006 and 2013.
OCME has identified some 1,104 victims since the attacks.
A shocking 40% of those who died remain unidentified.
More than 1,000 remains are currently stored at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center site.
With Post wires
