Hospitals in New York and adjacent New Jersey have treated about 2,000 people for injuries since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, a spokeswoman said shortly after 4 p.m. today.
The Mayor of New York Mr Rudolph Giuliani said people are alive and sheltering in the basement of the WTC, but he expected the death toll to rise to more than 10,000 over the coming days.
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World Trade Center burning after two planes crashed into it
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"When we get the final number, it will be more than we can bear", he said.
He said people trapped under the rubble of the WTC had been making mobile phone calls to relatives and the emergency services.
Mr Giuliani also declared the lower part of Manhattan off limits to civilians until at least tomorrow.
In a televised address to the nation early this morning Irish time President George W Bush condemned the attacks as "evil and despicable".
About 40,000 people worked in the 110-story towers, which both collapsed about an hour after the jets crashed into them within 18 minutes of each other, erupting in spectacular fireballs.
More than 300 firefighters including senior fire officer and 85 police officers were feared dead under the buildings, which showered dust and rubble over several blocks and sent pedestrians fleeing in panic through a nightmare of smoke, screams and sirens.
The police department are said to be looking for more than 78 missing officers. Two officers have been freed from the wreckage.
A Pakistan-based Islamic militant group fighting against Indian rule in Kashmir today claimed responsibility for the terrorist attacks.
The Lashkar-i-Taiba said its suicide bombers had hijacked the jets which plunged into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
There was no way to verify the claim independently, and US officials have pointed the finger of blame at Afghan-based Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden.
Bush administration officials said an estimated three to five hijackers were aboard each of the airliners and they were armed with knives described as box-cutters. All four planes had been headed for California - two from Boston, and one each from Newark and Dulles, outside Washington.
One of the first victims to be publicly named was CNNcommentator Barbara Olson, who was flying on the plane which crashed into the Pentagon building.
She locked herself in a toilet and called her husband, American solicitor-general Theodore Olson, on her mobile phone to say the plane had been hijacked by more than one hijacker wielding "box-cutters and knives".