Ashes of 9/11 victims dumped on rubbish tip

REMAINS from victims of the 9/11 terror attacks were incinerated and dumped on a rubbish tip, the Pentagon admitted last night.

The scandal emerged just three months after U.S. defence officials acknowledged that the unidentified remains of troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan were also disposed of at a landfill site in Virginia.

The unclaimed September 11 body parts were deemed too small for DNA analysis.

They belonged to those killed when a hijacked plane struck the Pentagon, leaving 184 dead, and to the victims on United Airlines Flight 93, which was downed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing 40.

The Pentagon review did not specify how many human remains from 9/11 were burned and dumped by the Dover Air Force Base mortuary in Delaware.

The investigation was the latest to scrutinise operations at the mortuary, which has been accused of gross mismanagement.

In November, the U.S. Air Force confessed it dumped the incinerated remains of at least 274 troops in a landfill between 2003 and 2008, when the practice ended.

The families of 9/11 victims killed in New York’s World Trade Centre have launched legal action against the U.S. authorities for allegedly disposing of some remains of their relatives at another landfill on Staten Island.