Number Missing Revised Upward

The count of those missing in the World Trade Center attack rose by more than 900 on Thursday to a total of 6,333, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said, attributing the increase to a surge in reports from foreign nationals.

He cautioned that the new total might contain duplicate names, and said city workers were trying to sort out discrepancies.

The twin towers housed numerous branches of overseas businesses. “For example, British nationals have 250 [missing] alone,” the mayor said at a news conference. “The number may go up or down, depending on our checking.”

The mayor said 6,291 people were injured. The scope of the tragedy continued to stun New York, the nation and the diplomatic community.

President Bush said Thursday that people from 80 nations were missing after the attacks, which brought down the twin towers and damaged the Pentagon.

As the rescue effort entered its ninth day, Giuliani held out little hope survivors would be found. “Right now the possibility still remains,” he said. “[The odds are] slim, but they still remain.”

Very few intact bodies have been discovered by searchers digging through the rubble. On Thursday, the confirmed death toll was 241.

At a National Guard armory in Manhattan that initially served as a missing-persons center but proved too small to handle the demand, a large number of posters left by friends and relatives represented workers from Southeast Asia, Mexico and Central America.

After the facility was shifted to the city’s family center at a pier on the Hudson River, fewer people came to make use of it. Most who arrived were interviewed by detectives in booths for privacy, sometimes at great length.

A group of 40 U.S. senators, invited by Giuliani to see the devastation first hand, toured the ruins Thursday.

“I have seen the devastation from tornadoes, from ice storms and drought, all kinds of disasters . . . but I must say I have never seen anything comparable to what we have seen here today, the magnitude of it and the horror of it,” said Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.).

“This loss must be shared not only by New Yorkers, but by all Americans,” said Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.).

Former President Clinton said in a speech in New York that his administration pursued Islamic militant Osama bin Laden aggressively and did not mount a second military strike against him because U.S. intelligence information “never justified another reasonable opportunity.”

In his first address since the twin towers collapsed, Clinton told members of the Foreign Policy Assn. that he had reliable intelligence information before launching Tomahawk cruise missiles in 1998.

“Now, because of this awful tragedy, the stakes, the consequences and the possibility of American action have all been increased,” he said. “We must pursue them with determination, and the well-known phrase, ‘all deliberate speed.’ ”

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Times staff writer Jill Leovy contributed to this report.