Police investigating the Grenfell Tower fire have recovered 87 sets of human remains but cannot confirm they are from 87 individuals. In an update on the investigation, the Metropolitan police commander, Stuart Cundy, said: “In total we have made 87 recoveries, but I must stress that the catastrophic damage inside Grenfell Tower means that is not 87 people.”

These were last of the visible human remains left in the Tower, he said. “Until formal identification has been completed to the coroner’s satisfaction, I cannot say how many people have now been recovered.” Last month Scotland Yard warned it could take until the end of the year or longer to be sure how many people died in the fire, after raising the number of people presumed dead to 80. So far only 21 victims have been formally identified.Anthropologists have been brought in to advise investigators searching by hand through tonnes of debris recovered from each floor of the 24-storey block. (theguardian)…[+]