New Yorkers struggling to resume their lives were today heading back to work one week after kamikaze hijackers destroyed the World Trade Center.
Rescue workers were sifting through the wreckage for the 5,422 people believed buried, but hope of bringing anyone alive from the debris is fading. Only 201 bodies have been recovered so far. Of those, 135 have been identified.
Relatives of the missing continued to hope and pray, but they also lined up in increasing numbers to give DNA samples in case their loved ones could be identified from the lumps of charred flesh being collected by firemen.
Yesterday, the world's largest stock exchange spring back to life after its longest closure in 70 years. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 681.81 points, or over 7 per cent, marking its largest-ever point loss in a single day.
But it avoided meltdown, and many traders said they were relieved just to get back to work and find their colleagues still alive.
Wall Street's opening today remained unpredictable, however, with some analysts fearing a further slide as emergency, coordinated rate cuts the day before by the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank faded under renewed trading.
New York Mayor Mr Rudy Giuliani, whose human touch and direction of recovery efforts have earned him acclaim, even from critics, tried yesterday to prepare his city for the inevitable.
"We want everyone to prepare themselves for the reality that we're not going to recover a significant number of people," he said, after attending a ceremony for the 300 firemen and 67 police officers who died when the Trade Center collapsed.
In Lower Manhattan, electricity and telecoms engineers were reconnecting the financial district to the outside world. Affected businesses began setting up in temporary offices loaned by rivals, and the shops and restaurants of Chinatown and Littly Italy reopened.
New York State rushed through a law giving its authorities powers to impose draconian prison sentences and the dealth penalty for terrorism-related offences, as President George W. Bush issued a pledge to capture Saudi-born extremist Osama bin Laden "dead or alive".
FBI investigators, who are pursuing 84,000 leads to trace the perpetrators of last Tuesday's attack on the Trade Center and Washington's Pentagon, transferred four people to New York for questioning and detained two others as material witnesses.
Washington has accused bin Laden of masterminding the devastating attack. It has threatened to launch a military offensive against his protectors, Afghanistan's Taliban militia, despite outside pleas to avoid killing innocent civilians.
AFP