Other World News

The attack on the World Trade Center in New York was, indeed, an attack on a center of the world.

Hundreds of foreigners are reported to be among the victims of Tuesday’s assault on Manhattan’s twin towers. Their families share directly in the U.S. grief, and their governments have embraced the tragedy as their own.

Side by side with global U.S. banks and stockbrokers, prominent European and Asian firms occupied the prime New York real estate: Germany’s Deutsche Bank, France’s Credit Agricole and Japan’s Fuji and Asahi banks. At least 100 foreign-owned companies and government offices representing 35 nations were in the 110-story skyscrapers, which served as a gateway into the United States for many businesses and drew tourists from around the world.

For foreign firms, the World Trade Center--which took its name from a global business group whose motto, ironically, is “peace through world trade”--offered proximity to Wall Street and a gold-plated address for their business cards.

“It’s a very prestigious building,” said Lu Xin, and official in the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco. His country had 18 companies in the building; employees from five firms were still unaccounted for Thursday.

Britain Apparently Has Biggest Losses

Britain appeared to have suffered the biggest losses after the U.S., with nearly 100 nationals confirmed dead and hundreds still missing. One company with strong British ties, the Cantor Fitzgerald brokerage firm, is missing 700 of its 1,000 employees who occupied four upper floors of the North Tower. Many of those employees are believed to be British.

“What is clear is that a significant number of British people have died in this attack, and so it is an attack on this country and its people,” said a spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Foreign Minister Jack Straw said the number of British deaths could reach several hundred. Scotland Yard was sending a forensics team to help identify the dead.

Three Australians are known to have died in the attack and about 90 have been reported missing, according to the Australian Consulate in New York. Although there were no Australian companies in the complex, hundreds of nationals worked for U.S. financial service firms there, and the Reserve Bank of Australia was based across the street in One Liberty Plaza, which was badly damaged in the aftermath.

“The Australian community has a lot of friends and family in those buildings,” said Gregory Harvey, a consular official.

Japan, one of the top foreign investors in the U.S., had one of the largest representations in the World Trade Center, with 30 companies that included banks and securities firms. Japanese officials said 49 of their nationals are missing, including 25 tourists. Two Japanese were passengers on jets hijacked Tuesday. One plane went down in Pennsylvania; the other was one of two airliners that struck the World Trade Center.

South Korea has reported 16 people missing and two presumed dead aboard the hijacked flights.

Israeli, Irish, Lebanese and other foreigners also died on the planes, while scores of Turks, Bangladeshis and Mexicans--many of whom worked in building maintenance, restaurants and shops at the World Trade Center--were reported missing.

An Irishman in the complex survived the attack, only to discover that his sister and niece had perished on one of the two hijacked planes that slammed into the towers.

Ronnie Clifford, 47, of Cork said he helped carry a burned woman out of the wreckage.

“I wanted to get this woman out,” he told Irish television RTE. “A fireman told me to run, and we ran across the highway with her. As we were running there were bodies falling, there were girders falling, everything was falling off the building.”

He escaped uninjured but learned that his sister, Ruth Clifford McCourt, 44, and 4-year-old niece, Juliana, died on one of the two Boston-to-L.A. flights that struck the building.

An Irish Embassy spokesman in London said Irish nationals are believed to be among the victims buried in the collapsed towers. There were no confirmed figures, but in Dublin, hundreds of families had contacted the government seeking information about relatives in the United States.

The Irish government is treating the attacks as a national emergency, closing official buildings and schools today for a day of mourning.

The British government played “The Star Spangled Banner” during the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace on Thursday and will hold a service at St. Paul’s Cathedral today. The European Union has declared a three-minute silence for the dead.

In Pakistan, presidential spokesman Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi estimated that as many as 650 of his countrymen worked in the World Trade Center. He suggested that their presence in the building was a factor in the collective shock felt by his staunchly Muslim nation at the terrorist attack.

“If you noticed, while there were mixed reactions in the Middle East, I think the people of Pakistan were shocked by what has happened,” Qureschi said. “There has been no cheering here.”

At least three German citizens are thought to be among the dead, and 11 are missing. Three German managers from the BCT Technologies company in Willstaett were aboard one of the jets that crashed into the towers.

Deutsche Bank, on several lower floors of the North Tower, had 370 staffers in the complex and was still unable to account for 10 people.

The German insurance broker AON, Jauch & Hubener, on the 100th floor of the South Tower, is missing an employee who is feared dead.

French, Swiss, Belgians Open Crisis Centers

The governments of France, Belgium and Switzerland have opened crisis centers to deal with reports of missing citizens. None of their nationals have been identified yet, although the World Trade Center housed a subsidiary of the French bank Credit Agricole on the North Tower’s 92nd floor and Adecco, a Swiss company that was on the 21st floor.

Most of the Credit Agricole employees were Americans, and French diplomats believe there were few French victims, if any. The Swiss government is trying to establish a list of missing citizens, but no numbers were available Thursday. Belgian officials have sent their New York consulate a list of 150 Belgians in New York whose whereabouts were unknown.

More than 200 Turks have been reported missing, according to a Foreign Ministry spokesman. There were no confirmed casualties; at least six Turks in the building at the time managed to escape.

Investment banker Cengiz Cigeroglu, who missed the disaster thanks to car trouble, told the Turkish daily Sabah that he knew about 100 countrymen who worked in the towers.

“I am alive thanks to my car,” he said. “God willing, they are still alive.”

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Miller reported from Long and Iritani from Los Angeles. Times staff writers Carol J. Williams in Berlin, Sebastian Rotella in Paris and Tyler Marshall in Islamabad, Pakistan, and special correspondent Amberin Zaman in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report.