New York: More than 1,000 victims remain unidentified as the U.S. observed the 22nd anniversary of 9/11 terrorist attacks.
A commemoration ceremony took place at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in Lower Manhattan, New York, honouring the 2,977 people killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks, according to Xinhua news agency.
Just before the anniversary, the identification of two victims, a man and a woman whose names were kept confidential at their families' request, was announced from the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
The two new identifications represented the 1,648th and 1,649th persons identified since 2001 using advanced testing by New York City's DNA Laboratory, according to a statement by the mayor's office.
They were the first new identifications of World Trade Center victims since September 2021.
However, 1,104 victims - 40 per cent of those who died - remained unidentified, it said.
The number of 9/11 first responders who have died from Ground Zero-related health complications is nearly equal to the number of first responders who died during the attacks.
"When the towers fell on that terrible day, we lost 343 New York City Firefighters... In the years that have followed, over 341 more FDNY members have died from rare cancers and diseases caused by the toxic dust at Ground Zero," the Uniformed Firefighters Association of Greater New York wrote in a Facebook post on Monday.
With inputs from agencies