DNA test identifies victim of 9/11 attack 16 years on
THE remains of a man killed at the World Trade Centre on 9/11 have been identified nearly 16 years after the terror attacks, medical examiners said yesterday.
His name was withheld at his family’s request, the New York City medical examiner’s office said.
The announcement marked the first new identification made since March 2015 in the painstaking, ongoing effort.
The office uses DNA testing and other means to match bone fragments to the 2753 people killed by the hijackers who crashed planes into the trade centre’s twin towers on September 11, 2001.
Remains of 1641 victims have been identified so far.
That means 40 per cent of those who died have yet to have any remains identified.
New, more sensitive DNA technology was deployed earlier this year and helped make the latest identification after earlier testing produced no results, the medical examiner’s office said.
As DNA testing advanced, so has the multimillion-dollar effort to connect more than 21,900 bits of remains to individual victims.
Few full bodies were recovered after the giant towers burned and collapsed, and the effects of heat, bacteria and chemicals such as jet fuel made it all the more difficult to analyse the remains.