'No building halt' at Ground Zero

Human remains were found beneath a manhole at the site

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said construction work will continue at Ground Zero, despite recent finds of human remains at the site.

He said the discoveries, which included 18 fragments found on Sunday, would not halt work at the 9/11 attack site.

Families of more than 1,100 of those who died have never received any remains of their loved ones.

New finds of bones and human fragments last Friday sparked angry calls for the construction work to be halted.

'Tragic' finds

Many demanded answers about why the first search failed to find all the remains buried under the rubble.

But Mr Bloomberg said the city should still be "phenomenally proud" of the original search effort which ended in 2002, after about 20,000 human fragments had been unearthed.

"It's tragic that a handful of places were apparently not cleaned or scrutinized as well as they should have been," Mr Bloomberg said.

"But remember, the fire department, who cares perhaps more than any group, did go through almost all these buildings."

He said the sheer scale of the task made it almost inevitable that there remained places that had not been searched.

More searches

The search was prompted by the discovery on Friday of about 80 human bones and fragments in rubble from an abandoned manhole near the site.

City officials then ordered new checks of underground areas close to Ground Zero that could have been missed.

On Sunday, the city's Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler said they had identified further manholes and utility cavities that needed investigating.

Five underground areas have already been investigated, and another 12 will be examined over the coming days, the Associated Press news agency reports.

The discovery comes just weeks after the fifth anniversary of the 11 September 2001 attacks, in which more than 2,700 people died.