A handful survive but 20,000 may be dead in Manhattan

As many as 20,000 people have been killed in the attack on the World Trade Centre, authorities fear as the grim task of digging through the rubble of the world's worst terrorist outrage continues today.

New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani confirmed the city has ordered 6,000 body bags and said he feared "a few thousand" people had been unable to escape the Twin Towers before they collapsed, including 250 firefighters and 100 police.

The estimate of the dead comes from the New York Port Authority. It is believed that up to 20,000 people were working in the building before the attack, but that many thousands escaped soon after.

The authorities now believe that 10,000 people were in the towers themselves when they collapsed with a further 10,000 trapped in various buildings and on the ground within the massive complex.

There were some moments of relief for the rescue crews later today as five firefighters were pulled alive from the ruins. They were found in their vehicle under piles of rubble.

Earlier, a handful of survivors had been found by the teams who frequently clawed at the wreckage with their bare hands.

But Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said today that up to 100 Britons had been killed in the attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon and had already been identified.

He added that Scotland Yard's casualty bureau was in the process of contacting the families of the dead. He said the figure may reach the "middle hundreds".

The FBI is now urgently seeking 10 men who are at large and were involved in the terror plot. In addition, they have identified 40 others involved in the conspiracy including as many as 24 hijackers who died on the planes.

More than 2,500 people visited a grief counselling centre in a desperate search for missing relatives and all over New York people have been putting posters in windows appealing for information about loved ones not seen since Tuesday's terror.

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Despite the efforts of the emergency services there have been depressingly few survivors rescued from the mangled remains. Only five people, three of them police officers, have been pulled from the wreckage alive.

Trauma surgeon John Pryor, from the University of Pennsylvania, said: "There's no one to treat. It's just rubble. You can't even see bodies. There are very few injured, they are all dead."

Tony Blair was told there has been a "massive" number of calls to the Scotland Yard's casualty bureau at a meeting of the Government's civil contingencies committee.

A spokesman for the Prime Minister said: "It's difficult to predict with any certainty, but what is becoming clear is that the death toll of British citizens is likely to run into the hundreds. It is grim news indeed."

Mr Blair's full Cabinet is meeting in emergency session today to map out Britain's support for US military action in retaliation for the terrorist strikes against New York and Washington.

The grim backdrop to the meeting - the number of Britons killed - will be reinforced by tomorrow's debate by MPs in a recalled House of Commons.

With Mr Blair urging both his own ministers and other world leaders to stand firmly behind President George Bush, Labour MPs began warning the Prime Minister not to commit Britain to supporting a "disproportionate" US response.

It is unclear how many Britons were working in the World Trade Center at the time of the catastrophe, but many companies who rent offices in its 110 floors have British employees unaccounted for.

These firms include Merrill Lynch, Cantor Fitzgerald, American Express, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley. All are still desperately hoping staff will check in.

The largest number of Britons were attending a conference organised by financial technology company Risk Waters on the 106th floor of the North Tower. The company said 180 people were due to attend the conference and none of the delegates had been traced.

As the search for bodies continues, a Brooks Brothers clothing store was turned into a temporary morgue, where workers brought any body parts they could find.

The last few floors that remained of the Trade Centre's South Tower collapsed yesterday afternoon in yet another cloud of thick smoke. No injuries were reported, but rescuers were evacuated from part of the area.

Police and fire officials said there were problems with other "mini-collapses" among some badly damaged buildings nearby, and when the towers were destroyed, the Marriott World Trade Centre hotel fell with them.

Rescuers fled from the area around One Liberty Plaza after firefighters and police said engineers had warned them of the building's imminent collapse. However, the company that owns the building later said it had sustained no structural damage when the twin towers collapsed.

The devastation turned lower Manhattan into a dust-covered ruin of girders and boulders of broken concrete. The workers' task was interrupted by brief epiphanies of life, when a fortunate victim was pulled alive from the wreckage of the steel-and-glass buildings.

Mayor Giuliani said: "The best estimate we can make ... is there will be a few thousand people left in each building."

Eighteen rescue teams are operating in the city, with support staff and vehicles brought in from other US states.

Over 1,000 people were being treated at local hospitals in Manhattan and about 2,000 walking wounded were ferried across the Hudson River to New Jersey.

Some survivors have been critical of the authorities, saying that crowds remained in the streets around the centre gazing up at the burning twin towers before the structures crumbled to the ground, killing those inside and below.

Workers who managed to escape have also questioned the lack of co-ordinated evacuation procedure in the minutes after the aircraft struck.

There was no internal alarm system to warn the thousands inside the 10 million sq ft of office and retail space around the Trade Centre towers to evacuate. Most fled when they saw smoke billowing outside and bodies falling past their windows.

Those arriving for work say they were not told their offices were shut for the day - despite the blazing towers - just that there would be a delay in opening them. There were no instructions to leave the area.

The US military's Pentagon headquarters, hit by one of the hijacked planes, reopened for limited business as rescue teams searched through rubble for up to 200 or more missing defence workers.

Touring the building, President George Bush said the devastation made him sad and angry, adding: "The nation mourns but we must go on."

Dozens of firefighters finally put out a stubborn roof fire on the blackened concrete structure more than 24 hours after the hijacked fuel-laden airliner slammed into the building.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters earlier estimates by fire officials that as many as 800 workers could be unaccounted for were apparently much too high.

"From everything that we currently know, the estimate that has been widely reported is considerably high. I hope and pray that it is," he said at a Pentagon news conference.

Officials of the armed services said privately that perhaps about 200 military and civilian workers were missing in addition to 64 passengers and crew on the Boeing 757 Flight 77.

He said it could be "several days" before workers got into the blackened rubble - 16,000 tons of it, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Hundreds of people gathered outside the White House for an impromptu candlelight vigil last night. Members of the crowd sang songs such as Amazing Grace and God Bless America, and took turns reciting hopes for the country in the wake of coordinated attacks.

John Benson, 31, held up a threadbare, discoloured flag that he said had covered his grandfather's coffin and later flown at his family's home during the Iranian hostage crisis two decades ago.

He said he has also flown the flag during other periods of turmoil, including the Gulf War and the Oklahoma City federal building bombing. "I'm going to fly this until there's peace again in this land and in this world. It's gotten us through other things and it will get us through this one," Benson told the crowd.

Share trading in New York may not resume until next week as the world's leading investment banks struggle to overcome the immense damage to their communication systems.