Survivors pulled from Trade Center rubble as thousands feared dead

4:30 pm

NEW YORK - A ray of hope emerged from the destroyed World Trade Center late this afternoon (NZ time) when two police officers were pulled alive from the rubble while others trapped inside made desperate pleas for help via cellphones.

But it is thought the number of people killed when the two 110-storey buildings collapsed in downtown New York couild reach the thousands.

Twenty thousand people worked in the World Trade Center.

In Washington DC, as many as 800 are feared dead after a third hijacked plane ploughed into the Pentagon, headquarters of the US defense department.

New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said two police officers of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which had its headquarters inside the trade center complex were pulled out alive.

Giuliani, along with New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, said emergency services were receiving phone calls from people trapped inside the remains of the 110-story twin towers.

A police department source told Reuters the trapped callers have dialed the 911 emergency number and were trying to describe to police where they were trapped.

Giuliani said the callers were also saying there were other people alive near them.

However, doctors manning the emergency triage centre at the NYU Downtown Hospital said they saw mostly firefighters coming in for treatment.

"We keep hearing word that they are finding pockets of people, and that's why we're all excited and standing around here.

"But I just walked over there an hour ago and it didn't seem like we were getting real close to that," said Dr Harold van Bosse speaking from the Mount Sinai NYU Medical Center's NYU Downtown Hospital.

Reports today said at least 78 New York police officers were missing, presumed dead, and more than 300 firefighters who rushed to the scene in Lower Manhattan this morning have been reported missing, presumed dead.

Meanwhile, NBC television says as many as 800 people are thought to have died in the attack on the Pentagon, just outside Washington.

The television network gave no source for the report, but CNN reported that between 100 and 800 Pentagon personnel were today still listed as missing, possibly dead.

Washington hospitals reported 71 people injured, some severely.

Ed Plaugher, the fire chief in Arlington, Virginia where the Pentagon is located, told channel 9 television: "We always were afraid the Pentagon could be a target."

The plane, a Boeing 757 carrying 64 people, sliced into the US military headquarters building during morning working hours at about 1.30 am (NZT).

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was in his office in the Pentagon at the time and briefly helped with the rescue operation, said the total number of casualties, including those who had been working in the building, was not yet clear.

But he added: "It will not be few."

Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Esssen said he believed many of the missing New York firefighters were dead.

The firefighters were among the rescuers who were in the process of evacuating people trapped inside the twin towers when the buildings collapsed.

New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said the city's Fire Department also lost its first deputy commissioner, chief of department, chief in charge of the special operations command and a chaplain.

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