A bomb threat forced the evacuation Thursday of hundreds of workers from the site where a hijacked plane slammed into the Pentagon, a Pentagon spokesman said, adding that they were allowed to return two hours later.
The FBI received the threat claiming there was a bomb at the site a little before 6 am EST (1000 GMT), said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman.
"We did withdraw people from the site for about two hours," he said. "They are back working."
The threat came after a night in which workers pulled bodies out of the wreckage of the building, which was struck early Tuesday by a hijacked American Airlines jetliner.
The bodies were found by Fairfax County, Virginia engineers who went into the build Wednesday night to begin shoring up the structure to make it safe for an all-out search, said Richard Bridges, spokesman for Arlington County, Virginia, which was directing the effort.
"When they found the bodies, they did remove them," he said. "They worked through the night."
"They haven't started the full-fledged digging through the rubble because they can't quite do that yet," he said.
Bridges would not say how many bodies have been recovered and Pentagon officials still would not comment on the number of people who lost their lives in the attack, which came minutes after other hijacked jetliners struck the towers of the World Trade Center.
Pentagon officials, however, said they expected to release the official toll later in the day.
Meanwhile, A family assistance center was set up by the Pentagon at a hotel in nearby Crystal City, Virginia, to provide information, counseling and support for people unable to locate loved ones, and the military services set up a hotline to answer questions -- WASHINGTON (AFP)
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