NEW YORK  — The victims of the bike path attack near the World Trade Center included five Argentines, part of a group of friends celebrating the 30th anniversary of their high school graduation with a trip to New York City.

The Argentine foreign ministry identified them as Ariel Erlij, Hernan Diego Mendoza, Diego Enrique Angelini, Alejandro Damian Pagnucco, and Hernan Ferruchi. In addition, it says Martin Ludovico Marro was recovering from injuries at Manhattan's Presbyterian Hospital.

Bicycles and debris lay on a bike path at the crime scene where investigators work after a motorist earlier in the day drove onto the path near the World Trade Center
Bicycles and debris lay on a bike path at the crime scene where investigators work after a motorist earlier in the day drove onto the path near the World Trade Center (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)
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The victims were among eight friends celebrating the anniversary of their 1987 graduation from the Polytechnic School of Rosario, Argentina, with a U.S. trip to New York and Boston, where their classmate, Marro, lives.

Argentina's consul in New York, Mateo Estreme, told La Capital in Rosario that the four survivors in the Argentine group are in a state of shock. Only days earlier, before flying to the U.S., they had posed for a group photo, all of them wearing T-shirts with the word "Libre," or Free.

The trip was paid for by Erlij, the chief executive of Ivanar, an Argentine steel products manufacturing company, according to Argentina's La Nacion newspaper. Several other victims were architects.

"Four died at the scene and another young man died when he was taken away by an ambulance," Jose Nunez, a national deputy who was a friend of several of the men, told La Nacion.

The government said it expresses its most sincere condolences and that all Argentines are sharing in this terrible moment of profound sadness.

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