9/11 Victims Tally Continues to Grow As DNA Technology Identifies Man After 16 Years

New York, August 8, 2017: The remains of a man killed in the terrorist attack on New York's World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, have been identified nearly 16 years after the deadly attacks.

The city medical examiners' office announced the finding Monday, but is withholding the man's name at the request of his family.

It is the first new identification made since March 2015.

Remains of 1,641 victims have been identified. That means 40 percent of those who died that day have yet to have any remains identified.

New, more sensitive DNA technology was deployed earlier this year and helped make the latest identification after earlier testing produced no results, the medical examiner's office said.

Nearly 22,000 human samples recovered from Ground Zero have been tested and retested since 2001 in an effort to return the remains to the families.

The 9/11 airliner attacks killed a total of nearly 3,000 people in New York, at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. (VOA)