Seven weeks after the terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center, the number of estimated dead has continued to decrease with some newspapers claiming on Thursday that the number could be well below 3,000.
The New York Times, USA Today and another news services published separate lists, with totals ranging from 2,405 to 2,943 deaths.
New York City, by contrast, said on Wednesday the number of missing and presumed dead stood at 4,339 with 478 bodies recovered, of which 425 have been identified.
That number has fallen from the city's own estimates of more than 6,000 missing and presumed dead in the days following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. City officials said they have revised the figures as bodies were recovered and people who were thought missing were found again by relatives or friends.
Symptomatic of the confusion over numbers, even The New York Times in its story Thursday reported conflicting figures within one article and accompanying table -- 2,405 dead and 2,943 dead -- without explaining the discrepancy.
USA Today said its tally of dead and missing stood at 2,680 people.
The Times said of the 150 companies that had offices in the center, some have made public the number of people they lost, but others have not yet come out with any information. And then, there were tourists or people who were killed on the ground when the towers collapsed.
The discrepancy between the official number provided by the city and private lists cannot be explained immediately, as city officials have not made any decision to close the list of dead while rescue operations were still underway at the destroyed site, known as "Ground Zero."
"It has seemed to be odd," said USA Today's computer database editor Anthony DeBarros of the number of dead. "I don't want to discount the possibility that there were just visiting or working people in the building on that day, or people like carpenters or electricians."
"But still, even so, it is hard to understand where they are going to come from to reach the numbers the city is reporting," he said.
Of the officially known deaths, the largest were from Cantor Fitzgerald, a major bond trader on Wall Street, which reported 657 people killed of a total of 1,000 working on Sept. 11.
The NY fire department lost 343 men; Marsh and McLennan, a bond firm, lost 292; OAN, a bond firm, lost 176; Windows on the World, a restaurant on top of one tower, lost 80 people; and the Port of Authority of New York and New Jersey, 74 people.
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