Police on Thursday said the final death toll from London’s devastating Grenfell Tower fire had reached 71, while 223 people survived after earlier saying they believed at least 80 people had died.
The local coroner had formally identified 70 people, who died in the fire in June at the 24-storey 120-home social housing block in west London and recorded a stillborn baby as the 71st victim of the fire, the Metropolitan Police said.
“Police now believe that all those, who died in the fire have been recovered and identified,’’ the force said in a statement.
“Specialist teams working inside Grenfell Tower and the mortuary have pushed the boundaries of what was scientifically possible to identify people.
“The complexity of our efforts to recover and identify everyone, who died and also identify everyone, who managed to escape that night cannot be underestimated.
“Our criminal investigation is continuing, and we are determined to do all we can to find the answers that so many people so desperately want,’’ Commander Stuart Cundy said.
The deadly blaze spread rapidly on the outside of the tower, where residents had expressed safety fears over several years about the use of potentially combustible external cladding.
Appointed by Prime Minister Theresa May, a former judge opened a public inquiry in September.
She promised to examine “the immediate cause or causes of the fire and to find the means by which the fire spread as well as the responses of national and local authorities and firefighters’’. (dpa/NAN)
