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Rescue workers search for survivors
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Weather has temporarily stopped New York's mammoth rescue effort for the thousands missing after the United States's worst terrorist atrocity. Today the world remembered those who died in the attacks.
Hopes that survivors could still be pulled from the wreckage of the World Trade Center towers were raised - then dashed - today after it was reported 10 police officers had been found alive.
Reports suggested five New York City and five Port Authority officers had been pulled from the huge pile of smoking rubble two days after the twin towers collapsed.
But the good news was seemingly short-lived as it appeared rescuers had found no survivors during their second full day of searching.
Heavy rain and wind forced the rescue effort to be mostly suspended. The structural integrity of several damaged buildings near the destroyed twin towers also threatens the effort.
New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said today: "There is still a strong hope we will be able to find people and save them."
But he said heavy rain was making rescue attempts more dangerous.
The Mayor said 10,400 tons of debris have been removed from the World Trade Center area.
US President Mr George W. Bush was due to visit the scene later today. He declared the day a national day of prayer and remembrance in honour of the thousands believed killed when two hijacked planes smashed into the center's towers on Tuesday.
A third hijacked plane slammed into the Pentagon near Washington and a fourth commandeered plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania, resulting in hundreds more deaths.
Countries worldwide are observing a three-minute silence for the victims of the atrocity. Ireland has virtually shut down in a National Day of Mourning.
Yesterday Mr Giuliani gave the official death toll so far from the New York attacks as 184.
In many cases, an emotional Mr Giuliani said, that 184 are parts of bodies. Forty-seven are whole bodies. Just 35 victims have been identified, he said.
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A woman holds up a sign
thanking rescue workers as they work in Manhattan |
He said the list of those missing numbered 4,763. Among the missing and presumed dead were an executive of the Port Authority, a former FBI terrorism expert, financial traders, restaurant employees, janitors and bicycle messengers.
The city remains on edge, with the three area airports closed yesterday by the Federal Aviation Administration only hours after they reopened for the first time since Tuesday.
Police Commissioner Mr Bernard Kerik said a man carrying false identification was arrested at Kennedy International Airport, and five or six others were detained in the incident and were being questioned by authorities. Some of them were Arabs, he told reporters.
About 90 bomb scares and threats, all unfounded, prompted evacuations throughout Manhattan and only added to frayed nerves.
But people in New York are struggling to resume some semblance of their daily routine.
In the city's outlying boroughs, shops were mostly open, people rode the subways, and cafes and coffee shops were filled. US flags hung everywhere.
Former president Mr Bill Clinton also walked the streets of Manhattan yesterday and toured the wreckage of the World Trade Center with his daughter Chelsea, who was only 12 blocks away when the twin towers collapsed.
- More than 700 German nationals are on an official list of people missing following the attacks, a spokesman for the interior ministry said today.