UK and Irish firms were continuing to try and assess the terrible toll in both lives and business lost following Tuesday’s attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC).

It is feared that the final death toll for UK and Irish employees may run to hundreds as rescuers scoured the ruins of the once proud landmark towers that were symbols of the financial might of the trading district in Manhattan.

It is still feared that up to 20,000 people may have perished in the atrocity. The Mayor of New York said on Thursday that 4,763 were known to be missing, 96 bodies had been recovered of which 46 had been identified. By Thursday rescue workers had found 11 survivors in the rubble of the buildings.

Some companies remained hopeful that many staff had managed to escape the blazing building and the devastation caused when both of the 1,360 feet 110-story towers collapsed after being deliberately attacked by terrorists who flew commercial passenger jets into the buildings.

On Thursday companies were still trying to come to terms and grasp the enormity of the disaster that has befallen the people working in the WTC, which, at the heart of the financial district, housed around 450 companies many employing thousands of people.

While it was confirmed on Thursday that 15 UK citizens and Irish citizens are among those missing it is feared that the final death toll may run into the hundreds.

ICAP, one of he world’s largest inter-dealer brokers, with offices on three floors of the WTC said that only two of the company’s staff were still missing.

However, inter-dealers brokers Cantor Fitzgerald had 1,000 staff working in the 101st to 105th floors of the north tower in the area hit by the aircraft laden with aviation fuel. Only six are known to have survived.

Shocked staff in the company’s London office reported that a few Cantor Fitzgerald employees managed to make it to the roof where they made phone calls to relatives and friends. All are thought to have perished.

Merchant banking firm Morgan Stanley was the biggest single tenant in the WTC employing some 3,500 people in offices located throughout the complex. Unconfirmed reports indicate that around four fifths of the staff had been accounted for and that more had been located on Thursday.

The 47-storey Salomon Brothers Building, which collapsed after the fall of the adjacent twin towers, had been evacuated. But it could not be confirmed that all the employees had made it to safety as the building was being evacuated when the first WTC south tower collapsed showering debris across a wide area.

Many other companies who had commenced evacuation procedures of buildings in the immediate area were similarly unable to confirm that employees had escaped the devastation caused by the collapse of the 110-storey twin towers.

By Thursday morning several financial firms, many with offices outside the destroyed WTC complex, had announced the implementation of disaster recovery programmes in a bid to recommence trading as soon as possible and made counselling provision for staff. (SP)