Officers say they have recovered and identified the final two bodies from the tower and do not expect to find any more

The Grenfell Tower fire took the lives of 71 people, police have said, after recovering what they believe to be the last of the bodies.

Officers investigating the disaster said on Thursday they had identified the final two people who died as 71-year-old Victoria King and her 40-year-old daughter, Alexandra Atala.

“We were devastated to hear of our sister Vicky’s fate and that of her daughter, Alexandra, in the Grenfell Tower tragedy,” their relatives said in a statement.



“Some comfort can come from the knowledge that she and Alexandra were devoted to one another and spent so many mutually supportive years together. They died at each other’s side and now they can rest together in peace. We will remember them always.”

Q&A Why is there such a discrepancy between the Grenfell death toll and the initial number reported missing? Show Hide The police’s expected and confirmed death tolls were always a lot lower than much of the speculation. The shadow home secretary and others, such as the singer Lily Allen, had insisted at various times that the number must be well into the hundreds. There was even a quickly disproven conspiracy theory that media outlets had been told by the government to hide the disaster's true extent. The Metropolitan police put out two figures: the number they knew to have died at any given time; and the number they believed they would eventually find. The first number was always low, because officers required a high standard of evidence before they would announce that a body had been identified. For the second, police had to calculate how many people were unaccounted for. They received thousands of calls, with many duplicate reports. One person, for example, was reported missing 46 times and, on the day of the fire, the list of missing people had 400 names on it. Each had to be checked before an accurate list could be compiled – a process that took months. The matter was complicated by incomplete records of who, exactly, was in the tower on 14 June. Some of the dead may have been visiting family and not appeared on any records. Some residents may have survived, but not been traceable. Police have now said everyone who was reported missing and was unaccounted for has been listed as having died and they do not expect to find any other bodies in Grenfell Tower.



Scotland Yard does not expect to find any more people in the tower. Those who died included a family of six and at least three families of five, and ranged in ages from a stillborn baby boy to an 84-year-old woman.



Faith leaders in the area said the police statement marked an important moment. “The expectation of many people in the community was that the death toll was in the hundreds. So in a way this is good news, although every single death was and is a painful loss,” said Abdurahman Sayed of al-Manaar mosque.

“The trauma and mourning is ongoing. Every Friday, during prayers, we witness the sadness on people’s faces and the tears in their eyes. Many people are still not ready to talk about what they went through. The impact of the tragedy is long term and wider than the residents of the tower itself.”

Father Alan Everett of St Clement’s church said the announcement was a significant milestone. “The pain and grief of the past few months has been intensified by the uncertainty of not knowing how many perished in Grenfell Tower. The protracted recovery process has been very difficult for everyone,” he said.

“The disaster has been so traumatic and disempowering that to be given a final figure is very important. But at the same time it drives home the scale of the loss. Every single person who died had a network of friends and family, and they are all still grieving. They need our thoughts and prayers.”

Rev Mike Long, minister of the Notting Hill Methodist church, almost at the foot of the tower, said the last five months had been an appalling ordeal for those bereaved by the fire.

Grenfell five months on: 'They are not the same children as they were' Read more

“The news that all those who so tragically lost their lives have now been recovered and identified marks a significant stage. Hopefully this will help in the long healing process and establishing confidence among the community.

“Behind these statistics are the lives of individual women, men and children whose loss is devastating. Our thoughts and prayers remain with all those who have lost loved ones, or continue to bear the scars of that night’s traumatic events.”

He said the “difficult and demanding work of the recovery and forensic teams has been remarkable, and their efforts need to be acknowledged”.

Stuart Cundy, the Metropolitan police commander who is overseeing the investigation, said: “The human cost and terrible reality of what took place at Grenfell Tower affects so many people. Our search operation and ongoing investigation is about those people.

“I cannot imagine the agony and uncertainty that some families and loved ones have been through whilst we have carried out our meticulous search, recovery and identification process.”



Among the dead were a mother who was found clutching her baby daughter. Her husband and another of their children also died in the fire, while a third child survived. An Italian couple who had moved to London together died, as did a family of three and the relative they are believed to have been visiting in the tower.

The Met said on Thursday that the tragedy “should never have happened”. The force is conducting a criminal inquiry and officers have told survivors there are “reasonable grounds” to suspect Kensington and Chelsea council and the organisation that managed the tower block of corporate manslaughter.

Members of 320 households affected by the fire are still living in hotel accommodation, including more than 200 children from the tower and its neighbouring blocks.



All the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire named so far Read more

An independent report published by the Grenfell Recovery Taskforce said council staff dealing with the traumatised survivors of the blaze needed to display “a greater degree of humanity”.

Scotland Yard initially said it thought the final death toll would be about 80, but revised that estimate down in September. The coroner plans to open and adjourn the final inquests next Wednesday.

Timeline Key events since the Grenfell Tower fire Show Hide

The fire breaks out in the early hours of the morning, prompting a huge response from emergency services, who are unable to bring the fire under control or prevent a severe loss of life. The then Conservative prime minister, Theresa May, visits the scene and orders a full inquiry into the disaster, and the government promises that every family will be rehoused locally. The communities secretary, Sajid Javid, orders an emergency fire safety review of 4,000 tower blocks across Britain, and it will emerge that 120 tower blocks have combustible cladding. Scotland Yard launches a criminal investigation into the Grenfell fire. The chancellor, Philip Hammond, says the cladding used on Grenfell Tower was banned in the UK. The retired judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick is appointed to lead the public inquiry. Kensington and Chelsea council’s first meeting since the disaster is abandoned after the council fails in a bid to ban the media from attending. Survivors have their first official meeting with the police and coroner. The inquiry formally opens. As the final death toll is confirmed to be 71 people, it is revealed that hundreds of households are still living in hotels. In defensive testimony at the inquiry, London fire brigade commissioner Dany Cotton said she would not change anything about the way the brigade responded to the Grenfell disaster, provoking anger from both survivors and the bereaved. Grenfell survivors and the bereaved expressed frustration at Scotland Yard after they admitted no charges were likely until 2021. The public inquiry report concludes that fewer people would have died had the fire brigade been better prepared. Leader of the House of Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg is forced to apologise after stating that victims of Grenfell did not use "common sense" and leave the burning building. Grenfell cladding firm Arconic reveals it has spent £30 million on lawyers and advisors defending their role in the disaster. The second phase of the Grenfell Tower inquiry begins. Stacee Smith and Grace Mainwaring

In the immediate aftermath of the fire, 400 people were listed as missing. Police said footage showed 223 people escaping the fire, while others were not at home on the night of 14 June.



Police said 70 people died in the fire, and that a baby was stillborn afterwards and was added to the death toll.

The search of the tower is nearing its conclusion, with each flat and all of the communal areas having been checked. The process included a forensic fingertip search by specially trained officers, who examined 15.5 tonnes of debris on each floor. They were supported by forensic anthropologists, archaeologists and odontologists.



While officers do not expect the final stage of the search operation to be finished until early next month, they said it was “highly unlikely there is anyone who remains inside Grenfell Tower”.

Cundy said he had made it a priority that the bodies of those who died were recovered before any other work took place. “It is vital that our search and identification operation was undertaken in a manner that families and loved ones could have complete confidence in.”

Specialist teams working in the tower as well as the mortuary staff “pushed the boundaries of what was scientifically possible to identify people” said Cundy, adding that he had been concerned his team would be unable to recover and identify everyone when he first saw the extent of the damage.

They overcame that “for every person who lost their life, their families and loved ones, and all those for whom Grenfell Tower was home” he said.

The Met received thousands of calls reporting missing people in the aftermath of the fire, including many reports referring to the same people. One person was reported 46 times and others were identified by slightly different names.

“Even the slightest differences in spellings had to be thoroughly investigated and reconciled. Until that process was complete, those people continued to be regarded as missing,” the force said.

Cundy said police had no reason to underplay the scale of the disaster. “There will be speculation … Why on earth would we want to cover any of this up?” he said.

He said the key parts of the criminal investigation were how the building was constructed, the refurbishment, the management of the building and the fire safety measures. Another key point was “how did the fire spread from the flat to the rest of the building”.

Cundy said the criminal investigation would be long and complex. Five months on from the fire, no search warrants have been sought or executed and no one has been arrested or interviewed under caution.

He said the remains of the tower were still a crime scene and searches and work there would continue until at least spring 2018. When police stop treating it as a crime scene and finish their work there, Cundy said, they would not object to its demolition if its owners wanted to do so.