Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Officials at the Pentagon said Thursday that some victims of the terrorist attack may never be accounted for.
Of the 189 people believed to have died as a result of the attack, only 33 sets of remains have been identified. Substantial remains of 118 people also have been recovered from the huge building in suburban Arlington, Va., that is headquarters for the U.S. armed forces.
"Those are the individuals they’ll be able to identify point-blank," said chief Edward Plaugher of the Arlington County Fire Department.
The FBI expects the site will become primarily a crime scene investigation by the weekend.
"As the search-and-recovery process winds down, the investigative phase, the crime-scene investigation, starts to build up," said Van Harp, head of the FBI’s Washington field office.
About 200 truckloads of rubble have been removed from the scene. Dozens of crime-scene technicians, clad in protective clothing and wearing breathing apparatus, have been cataloging potential evidence on a Pentagon parking lot.
"They quite literally have been evidence miners," said Plaugher. Thousands of tons of rubble have been removed from the hole where hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon’s west wall on Sept. 11.
"They’re going through with rakes and hand tools," said Officer Damon Tyson, an Arlington County police officer.
Meanwhile, two companies of military police arrived in the Washington area in separate convoys totaling 106 vehicles. The soldiers, from the Army’s Fort Stewart in Georgia and Fort Bragg in North Carolina, are to provide additional security at the Pentagon and other Army facilities.
On the Net: Military photos of recovery operation: www.defenselink.mil/specials/imagery
Copyright ©2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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