Trade Center Death Toll Plunges
The number of dead and missing in the Sept. 11 terror attack on the World Trade Center has dipped below 3,900 and may well fall further, according to the New York Times.
While 5,000 or 6,000 dead and missing are figures commonly used for the disaster at the twin office towers, the official death toll is 3,899, according to Mayor Rudy Giuliani's office.
The newspaper cited city officials who said the number of dead and missing could fall to 3,000 as officials discover more duplications and errors.
"Thank God so many of these people are alive and well," the paper quoted Charles Campisi, the chief of the New York Police Department's Internal Affairs Bureau, as saying.
On Sept. 11, the twin towers of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan collapsed after hijackers crashed two airliners into the 110-story structures. Another hijacked plane damaged parts of the Pentagon outside Washington and a fourth crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.
The Times said there was some confusion on Tuesday among city and police officials about the World Trade Center toll.
Police officials said they believed the current number of dead and missing to be 3,702, while the mayor's office put the number at 3,899, the paper said.
In the Pentagon, 189 people were killed or are missing, including 64 people who were onboard the plane. Forty-four people were killed in the Pennsylvania crash.
"Using the figure released yesterday, the death toll for all three attacks could not be higher than 4,142, and could fall to 3,245 as the city's revisions continue," the Times said.
The newspaper said unofficial compilations of the World Trade Center toll by news organizations have reached no higher than 2,950.
The Times said some individuals killed in the attack were listed more than once. For example, one woman was listed by both her maiden and married name, it said.
The report also said that dozens of names linked to foreign consulates have been taken off the dead or missing list as consulates lowered the number of people from their countries they believed to be at the World Trade Center at the time of the attacks.
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