Hopes fade for missing

Commuters are returning to a very different city

As New York's financial district returned to business on Monday, emergency teams continued the grisly work of combing through the wreckage of the destroyed World Trade Center.

New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said that 201 bodies have been retrieved from the rubble of the World Trade Center, 135 of which have been identified. Another 5,422 people are missing.

Many wore masks to protect against the smoky atmosphere

But hopes are fading for the thousands of families who have pinned up photographs of their loved ones in the city. No survivors have been pulled out of the 450,000 tons of debris since Wednesday.

The mayor has urged New Yorkers to try to resume their lives, and to the strains of God Bless America, police and firefighters rang the New York Stock Exchange's opening bell after its longest shutdown since the Great Depression in the 1920s.

A changed landscape

But workers are returning to a city which is very different to the one they are used to, greeted by police checking for identification and national guardsmen in camouflage gripping semi-automatic rifles.

Karen Altfest, who runs a company that deals in pension funds said she was "very apprehensive" as the Manhattan skyline came into view from her commuter ferry on the Hudson river.

But, she said: "We have to go on and show strength. We are going to call our customers to show that we are here."

180 bodies have been retrieved so far

David Komansky, chairman and chief executive of America's powerful brokerage company Merrill Lynch was also unbowed.

"You're damn right the firm is going to come back," he said. "This place did not get to be what it is by having a bunch of pussycats here."

For the rescue workers their job remains harrowing.

Firefighter Joseph Tustin, helping to search wreckage in which more than 300 of his colleagues and other emergency service workers are thought to be lying buried said: "The worst part is when you come across bunker gear, and you know you've got a firefighter. It's horrendous."