New York City Identifies 2 More September 11 Victims

Friday, April 27th 2007, 7:31 am

By: News On 6

NEW YORK (AP) _ The city identified the remains of two more Sept. 11 victims Thursday with the help of new DNA technology that has worked on 60 percent of the years-old remains that have been tested so far, officials said.

Eight victims have been identified this month by matching some of the thousands of human remains recovered after the 2001 attacks to the victims' DNA samples, the medical examiner's office said. None of the latest identifications came from remains that have been found since last fall in a service road at ground zero and in a nearby skyscraper.

Of more than 10,000 remains that the medical examiner's office still holds, more than 1,500 have been tested by a Virginia lab to obtain DNA profiles since early 2006.

The new technology, which allows DNA to be extracted from smaller bone samples, created successful profiles from 60 percent of the bones, the city said. The bones that could not be matched to a victim will be stored and tested again if technology improves, the city said.

More than 1,100 of the 2,749 victims killed in New York on Sept. 11 have no identifiable remains. The names of the victims identified Thursday were not released.