U.N. Chief Says Attacks Victimized World

The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center were targeted at the United States, but may also have killed citizens of more than 60 nations.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Tuesday that 62 countries have reported citizens missing since the twin towers collapsed and burned Sept. 11. Annan cited the number during his first visit to the disaster scene, where he described the carnage as “much worse than I thought.”

New York police said Tuesday that 5,422 people have been reported missing. The number increased by more than 400 this week, as foreign embassies and consulates began listing their missing citizens with the city’s emergency center, Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik said.

“So it was not just an attack on New York or the United States,” Annan, wearing a paper mask to ward off dust and grit, told reporters. “It’s on the world. . . . No one can remain indifferent.”

Annan’s comments came as Kerik announced that he expected the number of missing to remain near the current level of just more than 5,000. At the same time, New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, in his most explicit statement yet to families of the victims, said chances of finding survivors were “very, very small.”

“This is still a rescue effort,” he added, “but we don’t have any substantial hope that we can offer anybody.”

Rescue workers said they were bracing themselves for finding corpses and body parts rather than survivors. “Nobody’s really talking about it, but it’s not a happy scene in there,” said John Caccavale, a firefighter from Newark, N.J.

John Perdisatt, another firefighter from Newark, said: “You always feel there’s hope. It’s all we have right now.”

No one has been rescued since five people--including three police officers--were pulled alive from the rubble the day after the attack.

The death toll climbed Tuesday to 218, with 152 of the victims identified. Among the confirmed dead are 37 police officers, firefighters and emergency medical technicians.

Officials at the United Nations and the U.S. State Department declined to provide details regarding the missing foreign nationals. A U.N. spokesman said Annan was told Tuesday by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell that 62 nations had reported citizens missing.

Among the hundreds of tenants in the twin trade center towers were banks, trade offices and government offices of many countries--particularly from Asia. They included an office of the government of Thailand, the Bank of Taiwan, the Nishi-Nippon Bank, Fuji Bank, the China Chamber of Commerce, the Zim-American Israeli Shipping Co., and the Banco Latino Americano de Exportaciones.

“We are astonished by the evil in our midst, stunned at the scale of the tragedy, dazed by the disregard for human life, overwhelmed by the wound that has been inflicted--on this city, on this country, on us all,” Annan said at a synagogue in Manhattan before touring the disaster area.

At the ruins, Annan said news photographs and TV images had not prepared him for “the magnitude and the horror” of the attacks. He thanked rescue workers, telling them, “All the [U.N.] ambassadors and staff are rooting for you.”

Accompanying Annan were Giuliani, Gov. George Pataki, and a delegation of U.S. senators who are considering more emergency financial assistance to the city. Congress last week appropriated $40 billion in aid, much of it to New York state, Virginia and Pennsylvania, where the four hijacked airliners crashed. President Bush signed that legislation Tuesday.

Giuliani said the delegation’s visit “gives New Yorkers a sense that we are not alone and that we have a lot of support.”

Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii), chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, replied: “Mr. Mayor, very simply, we will not let you down.”

William Quick, a firefighter helping with the rescue and recovery efforts at the 16-acre site, hugged Pataki, telling him, “Governor, we just pulled out two today.” He meant corpses, not survivors.

Deep beneath the site, rescue teams from Los Angeles and Sacramento penetrated to the second and third levels of the concourse, a subterranean mall below tower five in the trade center complex. Dan Schroeder, 54, part of a 62-member team from Sacramento, said the unit works its way down “as far as they can, and then they go down to the next level.”

The team uses fiber optic cameras and a golden retriever search dog named Harley to hunt for survivors and to prepare for removal of debris. Crews have removed 50,000 tons of rubble from the site, city officials said Tuesday.

Earlier Tuesday, New Yorkers joined with people around the nation and paused for two minutes of silence at 8:48 a.m.--exactly one week after the first of two hijacked airliners slammed into the World Trade Center’s north tower.

Residents who were evacuated from their homes surrounding the disaster site in lower Manhattan learned Tuesday that they will have to collect their mail at the midtown post office, where long lines were forming.

Also Tuesday, a city official announced that a memorial service tentatively planned for Sunday in Central Park had been postponed indefinitely. The official said that, because of the trade center disaster, the city did not have enough police officers to provide security for a memorial.

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Times staff writers Tony Perry, David Zucchino and John J. Goldman contributed to this story.