Part of 9/11 plane landing gear found in lower Manhattan

NEW YORK - Reuters

A part of the landing gear, apparently from one of the commercial airliners destroyed on September 11, 2001, is seen wedged between two buildings in New York in this handout photo released by the NYPD on April 26. REUTERS/NYPD/Handout

A piece of landing gear believed to be from one of the commercial airplanes that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, has been discovered, wedged between two lower Manhattan buildings, police said on April 26.

The piece of landing gear found in a narrow alleyway behind 51 Park Place and 50 Murray Street in Manhattan's financial district includes a "clearly visible" Boeing identification number, New York City Police spokesman Paul Browne said.

Browne said the discovery was made on Wednesday by a construction crew inspecting the rear of the Park Place building. The location is the site of an Islamic prayer space and community center that opened amid controversy in the fall of 2011, two blocks from Ground Zero..

Police have secured the area between the buildings and are treating it as a potential crime scene, said Browne.

Nearly 12 years after two commercial airliners smashed into the two Manhattan skyscrapers, destroying them and killing nearly 3,000 people, city officials continue to turn up debris from the attack and identify human remains.

It will be up to the New York City medical examiner's office to determine whether to sift the soil around the site where the landing gear was found for more evidence.

This month the medical examiner's office said 39 possible human remains were discovered in 9/11 debris hauled years ago to the New York City borough of Staten Island, according to CBS News.

Since 2006, the painstaking work has led to 34 new positive identifications of victims.