A few days before the commemoration of the attacks of September 11, two more victims killed in the attacks in New York have been officially identified, thanks to new DNA sequencing technology, the city announced on Tuesday.
The head of the New York Forensic Institute said in a statement that her laboratory had identified the 1,646th and 1,647th people who had lost their lives at the World Trade Center.
A total of 2,753 people died in the al-Qaida attacks on New York City's twin towers on September 11, 2001.
Among them, 1,106 people have yet to be identified, or about 40% of those who died in New York.
"Twenty years ago, we promised the families of World Trade Center victims that we would do whatever we could — however long it takes — to identify their loved ones. With these two new identifications, we continue to meet our imperative obligations," wrote New York Forensic Institute chief Barbara Sampson.
Of the victims identified, one was a woman, Dorothy Morgan, who lived on Long Island and whose remains, found in 2001, were subjected to DNA testing. The second victim was a man whose remains were found in 2001, 2002 and 2006 but whose identity will remain secret at the request of his family.
For Sampson, the process and techniques put in place over the past two decades to identify every victim at the World Trade Center represent "the largest and most complex forensic investigation in U.S. history."
It was made possible thanks to a new technology of DNA sequencing known as new generation, according to the Forensic Institute of New York.
President Joe Biden plans to visit the three sites — New York City, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pennsylvania — where nearly 3,000 people died in the coordinated terror attacks.
