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NY attacks 'killed less than 4,000'

By Mike Fox in New York | 22.11.2001 15:01

Officials in New York say the death toll from the 11 September attacks on the World Trade Center hasfallen below 4,000. Initial reports suggested that as many as 6,000 people were killed when hijackers flew two passenger planes into the Twin Towers.Despite the falling numbers, the original estimates are still being widely quoted by politicians and media analysts.

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1669000/1669311.stm
Wednesday, 21 November, 2001, 22:54 GMT

NY attacks 'killed less than 4,000'

By Mike Fox in New York

Officials in New York say the death toll from the 11 September attacks on the World Trade Center hasfallen below 4,000. Initial reports suggested that as many as 6,000 people were killed when hijackers flew two passenger planes into the Twin Towers.

But since then, the number has steadily fallen as officials eliminated duplications and errors in the records. Unofficial lists put together by news organisations using
information from companies in the World Trade Center suggest the final figure could fall below 3,000. Latest official figures put the number of confirmed dead at 624 and the
number of people missing presumed dead at 3,275.
Many people who were listed as missing after the disaster returned home safely but their names were not removed from lists.

Final figure illusive

Other people were listed twice, with at least one woman appearing under both her maiden name and her married name.

Despite the falling numbers, the original estimates are still being widely quoted by politicians and media analysts. As the numbers fall, the tragic event looks likely to lose
its position as the date on which the most Americans were killed in a single day on American soil - 4,800 died in the battle of Sharpsburg in the civil war.

It seems the confirmed death toll will still be higher than the 2,400 killed at Pearl Harbour in 1941 and it will still be the deadliest terror attack on US soil, dwarfing the Oklahoma bombing of 1995 in which 168 people died.

A final figure for the dead at the Twin Towers may never be known.

Relatives of many workers are reluctant to report them as missing since their immigration status may be uncertain.

By Mike Fox in New York

Comments

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Why hide the good news?

22.11.2001 20:39

In a later post - "The Illegality of U.S. attacks on Afghanistan", a Professor Francis Boyle claims that "we’re now seeing the death estimate reduced to about 2,600". I can't check the veracity of this claim, but it does follow the trend of a declining death toll when the matter is discussed in the media, which is increasingly rare. Mike Fox's claim of initial estimates of 6,000 is disingenuous since videos of the BBC's output immediately after the event claimed "up to 50,000", which is a truly shocking number. By the next day this had been revised to 20,000 and by the end of the week the Beeb, along with much of the media, had settled on 6,000. This is still a shocking number of people to be murdered at a single stroke but it does mean that tens of thousands thought dead, aren't. That this good news should be kept from the headlines, at a time when most of it is pretty bleak, suggests the extent to which the corporate media are at the service of US war aims.

Ron F