Friday 31 May 2013

Farm workers killed in minibus accident in Turkey


Ten people were killed and 13 injured when a minibus carrying female farm workers in Turkey rolled over and fell into a creek, police said.

The accident took place Wednesday afternoon in the Adiyaman province, authorities said, as the minibus was taking the farm workers home.

The driver, Kazim Coban, lost control of the vehicle when its tire blew, and the minibus rolled and fell into a creek 100 feet below the road, officials told Today's Zaman.

Six of the workers were killed at the scene, and the others were transported to a hospital, where four others died.

The bodies of the women were taken to the morgue for autopsies.

Adiyaman Governor Mahmut Demirtas said that officials are investigating the incident.

Friday 31 May 2013

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2013/05/30/10-killed-in-minibus-accident-in-Turkey/UPI-98071369919389/

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Tragedy in Bayelsa: 20 feared killed in auto crash

NO fewer than 20 persons were reported dead in a motor accident in Amassoma, Yenagoa, on Wednesday.


Nigerian Tribune gathered that the 20 persons were mostly part-time students of the state-owned Niger Delta University, Amassoma who were returning from lectures in a 13-seater bus that collided with another that was returning to Amassoma from Yenagoa.

Confirming the incident, an eyewitness, Mr Inaikozia Fumgbe who is a 100-level Sociology student of NDU and whose vehicle was behind the bus, said the 13-seater bus with registration number RIVERS KNM 1415A clashed with another thirteen seater bus with registration number RIVERS SP 269 KPR from Yenagoa. It was without its headlight and was on high speed.

He said the accident occurred at about 8 pm on Tuesday night on the Amossoma-Ekpetiama road. He added that one pregnant woman was crushed while others with serious injuries and those that died on the spot were taken to nearby clinics and hospitals in Yenagoa.

He attributed the cause of the accident to over-speeding, When our correspondent visited the scene of the accident the mangled buses which belong to the Bayelsa State Transport Company were littered with blood stains and handouts of students and foodstuffs.

However, when contacted, the Public Relations Officer of Niger Delta University, Mr Joe Alagoa, who confirmed the accident, said nobody died in the mishap.

In a related development a middle aged woman, Mrs Chinyere Celestine and four of her children suffocated to death from carbon-monoxide that emanated from a power generator that they left on while they went to bed in an enclosed apartment, on Wednesday at their residence in Azikoro suburb in Yenagoa.

Sympathisers attributed the incident to the persisting power outage that has thrown the state into darkness over three weeks. Eyewitnesses told Nigerian Tribune that seven persons were affected by the incident but two persons at the time of filing the reports were receiving treatment while the dead bodies have been deposited at the Federal Medical Centre, Yenagoa.

Friday 31 May 2013

http://tribune.com.ng/news2013/en/news/item/13174-tragedy-in-bayelsa-20-feared-killed-in-auto-crash.html

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15 die in Sindhupalchowk bus crash


A bus headed for Kathmandu from Bhotang of Sindhupalchowk district crashed at Thangpalkot-1 on Wednesday morning, killing 15 passengers and injuring 30 others.

The bus, carrying at least 55 passengers, fell around 150 feet down a cliff at a bend on a dirt road at Salledanda. Twelve people were killed on the spot. Two others died undergoing treatment in a Kathmandu-based hospital, while the third one died on a Nepal Army helicopter that was ferrying the injured to Kathmandu.

People who survived the accident were caught under the mangled remains of the vehicle. They were rescued by a joint team of the Nepal Army, the Armed Police Force and the Nepal Police.

Many of them are said to be in critical condition.

Some passengers travelling on the roof of the bus jumped to save their lives. It was immediately unclear as to what caused the accident. The driver of the bus, identified as Maila Tamang, fled the scene.

One of the survivors, Raju Sherpa, said he saw Tamang jumping off the vehicle just before the crash.

Meanwhile, the relatives of the 12 passengers killed in the accident refused to receive the bodies, demanding compensation for their loss.

] Friday 31 May 2013

http://ekantipur.com/2013/05/30/headlines/15-die-in-Sindhupalchowk-bus-crash/372451/

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Bodies of More Than 200 Stalinist Purge Victims Discovered


The remains of 208 people believed to have been victims of the Stalinist purges have been discovered by a search team near Voronezh, Interfax reported Friday.

Members of the Don Search Team, who were responsible for uncovering the bodies, said that the executions were almost certainly carried out during the most grievous months of the Great Terror, between January and February, 1938.

An anthropological investigation will now be carried out on the remains in a bid to compare any biological data with archival records.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a number of research groups have sought to find and honor the victims of political repression, as well as conducting proper burials for unknown fallen soldiers.

Friday 31 May 2013

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/bodies-of-more-than-200-stalinist-purge-victims-discovered/480903.html

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With few clues, Afghan pathologists try to put names to torture victims


When the mortal remains of a man named Nawab were brought to what is, in effect, the Kabul C.S.I. on April 30, they all fit easily into a wooden crate small enough to carry under one arm.

Afghan pathologists at the Directorate of Forensic Medical Services do not even have powerful microscopes, let alone sophisticated DNA testing, so identifying those remains was more a session of 20 Questions with family members than a scientific investigation.

Mr. Nawab was one of 17 people who, according to an investigation by the Afghan Defense Ministry, as well as interviews with many of their family members, were last seen being picked up by an American Special Forces A Team in the Nerkh district in Wardak Province. He was reported detained on Jan. 30.

The Afghan authorities have now determined that 10 of those men are dead, with the others unaccounted for as much as six months after their disappearances.

In the crate there were chunks of bone that appeared to have been blown to bits, scorched scraps of flesh, a jawbone with 11 teeth and, most important, pieces of clothing, including part of a shirt with elaborate embroidery. The wear on the teeth indicated a man age 30 or younger, which Mr. Nawab was. But if family members were going to be able to get and bury the remains of Mr. Nawab, a driver from Ibrahim Kheil village, they would have to describe the embroidery and the type of fabric.

It came down to the victim’s mother, who remembered the embroidery because she had done it herself, allowing the family to describe a perfect match with the clothing scraps. Dr. Najibullah said he was satisfied, made the identification and returned Mr. Nawab’s remains to his family. (Like many Afghans, Mr. Nawab used and Dr. Najibullah uses only one name).

The Nerkh disappearances led to a severe strain in relations between the Afghan government and the United States military, with President Hamid Karzai at one point ordering all Special Operations forces out of Wardak Province.

Afghan investigators have accused a man named Zakaria Kandahari, whom they identify as an Afghan-American man working with the American commando team, of detaining, torturing and murdering many of the missing men. They also accuse the American team of at the very least being aware of his actions, if not complicit in them.

The American military said it had repeatedly investigated the disappearances in Nerkh and had found no wrongdoing by any American military personnel. It also insists that Mr. Kandahari is not an American citizen, and that even though he had been employed by the military as an interpreter, he was no longer working for Americans at the time a videotape showed him engaging in at least one case of torture.

“The video surfaced in January, and we started looking into it,” a United States military official said. “Afghans asked us about it; we started digging into this guy’s background.”

In the background of what has publicly played out as a politically delicate and contested criminal case, family members and Afghan forensic investigators have struggled to pin down details of the disappearances and killings.

Human rights investigators have been reluctant to list victims like Mr. Nawab as positively identified in the absence of DNA testing. The only such testing available in Afghanistan is at the American military base at Bagram.

Although the American military has said it investigated the disappearances thoroughly, three times, the results of those inquiries have not been made public, and officials have not been willing to discuss the findings publicly in any detail. No DNA tests were performed by the American authorities on the remains that were found, according to the Afghan authorities.

Dr. Najibullah and a second forensic pathologist who worked on these cases, Gul Rahman, both said they had never been visited by American military investigators, although at least three bodies identified as belonging to the Nerkh missing and found close to the former Special Forces base have been brought to their Kabul facility since April 7. (The other seven dead had been found relatively soon after their disappearances and were easily identified, so were never brought to the forensic center.)

In one case, the video evidence described by Afghan officials directly made the link between a body and the accused man: They say it shows Mr. Kandahari torturing a Nerkh resident identifiable as Sayid Mohammad.

Mr. Mohammad’s body was found on May 21, close to the Nerkh base used by the Special Forces at the time of his disappearance on Nov. 21. Mr. Mohammad’s remains were relatively easy to identify because his body had been sealed in a military-style black body bag and had only partly decomposed, according to Dr. Rahman. His feet had been cut off, but otherwise the body was intact.

A third set of remains found near the Nerkh base has been identified by the pathologists as belonging to Mohammad Qasim, a farmer from Karim Dad village, who was detained by a Special Forces team while attending a wedding ceremony Nov. 6, according to his brother, Shaheedullah, who also attended it. He said the commando team had included both Americans and Afghans, among them Mr. Kandahari.

But when family members went to the Special Forces base the next day, “they didn’t even admit they had detained him,” Mr. Shaheedullah said.

Mr. Qasim’s badly decomposed remains, discovered April 7 within a few hundred yards of the base, were brought to the forensics center in a heavy black plastic bag. Dr. Rahman, who examined them, said many of the bones had been fractured, which he said could have been from torture or from an explosion.

With the remains, which were unearthed in a trash pit, there was a handkerchief with flowers embroidered on it, he said.

Mr. Shaheedullah said family members had been able to describe the flowers in detail, and the pathologists ruled that the remains belonged to his brother.

“We are sure these bodies belong to these specific families,” Dr. Rahman said.

Friday 31 May 2013

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/world/asia/afghan-torture-victim-remains-pose-challenge-to-pathologists.html

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Locals first robbed, then helped victims

br> The Mendhwan accident, which claimed 14 lives, including that of the driver of the container which rammed into an oncoming luxury bus on Wednesday, has brought to light a chilling demonstration of greed taking precedence over life.

The locals who came forward to help the accident victims did so not for nothing. They first rummaged through their baggages, took all valuables and then helped the victims.

This heart-rending story has been told to the police by none other than one of the two drivers of the ill-fated bus (GJ.3.AW.9914) who miraculously survived the big bang with minor injuries.

The fatal collision took place on the Mendhwan Khind bridge on Mumbai-Ahmedabad Highway when Lalaji Amarsingh Rajput, 28, was at the wheel and Mahesh Ramanlal Mina, 35, the additional driver, was sitting next to him.

Both of them visited the Kasa police station on Thursday to give their statement.

In his statement, Mina said that after the accident, he fell out of the bus cabin and saw around 10 locals reaching the spot.

Instead of picking dead bodies and rescuing the injured, they boarded the bus and took away bags. They not only removed valuables from the bags, but also snatched away jewellery from the dead and the injured, Mina said, adding that they came back to help the hapless passengers only after hiding the booty.

Assistant police inspector of Kasa police station Bharat Choudhary said, “We were informed about the theft at the accident spot, but at that very moment our primary responsibility was to save lives. We could only recover those items which were found on the locals. Some handbags are missing and we will look into the matter.”

Friday 31 May 2013

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Salvage mission at Mt Kanchanjungha called off


The search for the five climbers who went missing on Mt Kanchanjungha since May 20 and are presumed dead has been called off Thursday.

The families of the missing climbers including two Nepalis and three foreigners, and the expedition organizer Seven Summit Trekking Agency (SSTA) have decided to stop the search after the team sent for the rescue of the five returned citing extremely bad conditions. The rescue team said the thawing of snow with the advent of summer has made it extremely difficult to climb the mountain in eastern Nepal.

"Our agency tried its best to bring back the bodies. But, we could not continue rescue operation as thawing of snow has already started," said SSTA Manager Minga Sherpa. He also informed that rescuers themselves would be at risk as the snow start melting from the second week of May.

Two Hungarians, a South Korean national, and three Nepali climbers are believed to have died while returning to camp 4 [7,400 meters] after scaling the 8,586 meter peak.

The agency also tried to send a helicopter to bring back the bodies after the effort mobilizing the rescue team on foot failed. However, the chopper also could not reach the incident spot.

Hira Dahal, the pilot, who had attempted to land on the incident spot, said it was impossible to collect the bodies from the height of 7400 meter in bad weather.

"We tried but it is an impossible job to retrieve the dead bodies from the spot," Pilot Dahal said after making an unsuccessful attempt. He also said that the rescue operation would be costlier. "Moreover the bad weather was the greatest impediment in the rescue effort," Dahal added.

Friday 31 May 2013

http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=55446

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Maharashtra to put info about missing children on internet


The state will now maintain an online database of missing children which would not only help it track them but would also enable it to monitor child trafficking into the state. Parents of missing children too will be able to access as well as post information about their child on the portal.

The state's women and child development department recently launched the missing child tracking system (MCTS), to monitor and track every child under the juvenile justice system.

Friday 31 May 2013

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-05-30/pune/39628143_1_child-trafficking-state-child-protection-society-tracking-system

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1 Dead, a dozen missing in Borneo river shipwreck


At least one person has been found dead and a dozen others remain missing after an overloaded passenger ferry sank in a river in the Malaysian portion of the island of Borneo, police said Wednesday.

The accident occurred on Tuesday near Belaga, in Sarawak province.

Authorities on Wednesday raised to 192 the number of survivors after another 11 people were rescued and taken to a shelter set up near the accident site.

Officials have been searching for survivors and/or bodies in a zone up to three kilometers (1.8 miles) from the spot where the ferry sank.

The ferry, the maximum safe operating capacity of which was 67 passengers, was traveling downriver with about 200 people on board, several of them sitting on the roof, when it hit some rocks in the river and capsized.

Most of the passengers were returning to their villages to celebrate the Gawai harvest festival, the most important of the year for members of the Dayak tribe, this coming weekend.

The Malaysian provinces of Sarawak and Sabah occupy the northern portion of Borneo, while the remaining 73 percent of the island's territory belongs to Indonesia.

Friday 31 May 2013

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/agencia-efe/130531/1-dead-a-dozen-missing-in-borneo-river-shipwreck

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Divers recover 10 bodies from Nigeria ship sinking


A contractor for Chevron Corp. in Nigeria says divers have recovered the bodies of 10 sailors who drowned when their ship sank off the coast.

The Jascon-4 capsized early on Sunday due to “heavy ocean swells” while the vessel was “performing towing operations” at a mooring point around 30 kilometres off oil-producing Delta state, Chevron’s Nigeria unit said on Sunday.

Sea Trucks Group said in a statement Friday that one other sailor remained missing from the sinking of the tug boat Jascon 4 some 14 nautical miles off the coast of Escravos, Nigeria. The company says the boat overturned Sunday while trying to tow a tanker in the area.

The company says it has halted recovery efforts as the ship is now too unstable for divers to work in.

Offshore work can be dangerous, as sailors face Nigeria pirate and militant attacks. Industrial accidents happen as well. A sailor drowned in 2010 after falling overboard from a boat working for French oil firm Total SA.

Friday 31 May 2013

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/divers-recover-10-bodies-nigeria-ship-sinking-19296116#.Uai1bonbQ34

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10 killed in Balangir mishap


As many as 10 persons, including two children and two women, were killed and seven of a wedding party were injured in an accident near Khaprakhol in Patnagarh sub-division of Balangir district on Thursday morning.

The accident took place when the victims were returning to their village after attending the party at Khujenpali near Bolangir town. The four-wheeler they were travelling in hit a tree after the driver lost control near Jogimunda on the Patnagarh-Khaprakhol route.

Eye-witnesses said the victims were trapped inside the vehicle and it took hours to rescue the injured passengers. Seven persons were taken to the Patnagarh hospital for treatment. Four of them were injured to VSS Medical College and Hospital, Burla. "We rushed to the spot after hearing about the accident and rescued the injured. It took us hours to rescue the injured persons from the mangled vehicle." zilla parisad member of Khaprakhol Baijayanti Saraf and her husband Dhrub Saraf said.

The bodies of the deceased were handed over to their families after conducting autopsy. "We have taken all steps to provide medical care to the injured persons with the help of the district administration. A compensation of Rs one lakh would be given to the next of kin of the deceased from the chief minister's relief fund," SDPO (Patnagarh) Sunil Joshi said.

Friday 31 May 2013

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bhubaneswar/10-killed-in-Balangir-mishap/articleshow/20358786.cms

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Task of Identifying Factories’ Dead Overwhelms Bangladeshi Lab


Inside a small government laboratory here, there are about 300 test tubes, each labeled with masking tape and containing an extracted tooth or a shard of bone. Day and night, dozens of these tubes rest on metal trays that vibrate with a motorized monotony. The shaking decalcifies the bone in a process that requires two weeks before material can be gleaned for a DNA profile.

Hasibul Islam Reaz, 10, has provided blood for efforts to identify his father, who worked in a factory building that collapsed. Outside the laboratory, people are waiting. There are at least 301 unidentified victims of last month’s horrific collapse of the Rana Plaza factory building. Those test tubes represent the only chance of identifying them. More than 500 people have given blood samples in the hopes of finding a DNA match. On a recent morning, Hasibul Islam Reaz, 10, placed a spindly arm before a needle, his eyes widening as his blood drained through a thin tube into a syringe.

“If I give them blood,” the boy said softly, “I will learn where my father is, which body is his.”

First came the frantic search for survivors after Rana Plaza collapsed on April 24. Then came the grueling recovery of victims, with a death toll now at 1,129, the deadliest disaster in the history of the garment industry. Now, with the wreckage cleared, the slow, painstaking process of identifying bodies has become a wrenching exercise, bringing accusations of cover-ups, even as many families struggle to find loved ones and qualify for government compensation.

With its venomous politics and blood-soaked history, Bangladesh is rife with conspiracy theories under normal circumstances. In the Rana Plaza collapse, opposition leaders have claimed — without substantiation — that the government has hidden bodies. Activists have accused the government and industry leaders of intentionally stalling promised compensation payments to survivors and families of the dead.

The anger and controversy have only intensified the pressure on the small staff of the country’s National Forensic DNA Profiling Laboratory. Founded in 2006 with a grant from the Danish Embassy, the lab is now overwhelmed. Completing the DNA profiles could take months. New machines are needed to decalcify the bone samples. Approval is still pending for expensive software capable of sorting through the tens of thousands of possible DNA matches.

“To handle normal situations, the lab is O.K.,” said Sharif Akhteruzzaman, who oversees operations there. “But now a whole year’s caseload has come up, all of a sudden.”

From the moment Rana Plaza collapsed, the scale of the disaster outstripped the capacities of the Bangladeshi government. In the initial days, as dozens of bodies were being pulled hourly from the wreckage, a nearby high school served as a staging area for thousands of people looking for missing relatives or just gawking. Bodies were placed in plank coffins and sprayed with disinfectant as lines of people walked slowly past.

Shaikh Yusuf Harun, deputy commissioner for the district of Dhaka, said the chaos of the moment inevitably led to confusion — and some mistakes. Initially, 291 bodies could not be identified. Officials have also since discovered that 10 bodies were mistakenly turned over to the wrong families and buried in distant villages. In three of those cases, families later discovered that their missing relatives were alive, while in the other seven, remains were simply handed over to the wrong people. There are plans to exhume the bodies and take bone or teeth samples.

Some opportunists took advantage of the tumult. With the huge crowds and local reporters pressing forward, officials were sometimes reluctant to challenge someone who claimed a body. In at least two cases, officials handed over bodies as well as initial payments of 20,000 taka, or about $250, to people who pocketed the cash and dumped the corpses at the edge of the school grounds.

“It was a crisis,” Mr. Harun said. “There could have been a riot. Some officials had to hand over a body.”

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has announced a compensation package for families of those killed at Rana Plaza that could exceed $12,000, with the money coming from public and private sources. The amount is substantial, given that the minimum wage in the garment industry is $37 a month. Yet so far, only 150 families have received the first installment of about $1,100, according to Mr. Harun, prompting criticism that the government is purposely making it difficult for people to claim the money.

Such disputes over compensation are still dragging on from the fire in November that destroyed the Tazreen Fashions garment factory and killed 112 workers who had been making clothing for brands that included Walmart and Sears. One problem for families is merely proving that a relative worked in a factory: at Tazreen, just outside Dhaka, the flames that consumed many victims also destroyed their identification tags. And in the Rana Plaza collapse, rumors have swirled of bodies disappearing after being whisked away in trucks, prompting the leader of the political opposition to accuse the government of a cover-up.

“In Rana Plaza, we suspect the death toll is much higher,” said Jyotirmoy Barua, a lawyer who has been working with victims of the Tazreen Fashions and Rana Plaza disasters. “The only reason for lowering the number is to lower the compensation.”

But such accusations have been sharply rebutted by the government, and many others note that any coordinated effort to hide bodies would have been difficult, given the thousands of people who had rushed to the disaster site, including dozens of journalists filming every development.

“It was not possible,” Mr. Harun said of the rumors. “It is totally baseless.”

One reason for the slow distribution of compensation is that officials say they are struggling in some cases to determine who the rightful claimants are. Most garment workers migrated to the Dhaka region from rural villages. They often supported a spouse and children, and they also sent back money to help their parents.

Now, with the deaths of so many breadwinners, some families are desperate and fighting over the compensation. Mr. Harun said one woman, three months pregnant, lost her husband in the Rana Plaza collapse. She was given his body and his official documents, only to see his parents snatch the documents and make a claim for compensation.

“There are so many cases like this,” Mr. Harun said. “We need to sort them out individually.”

At the DNA laboratory, Mr. Akhteruzzaman said his staff needed two or three months to begin making matches. Ordinarily, scientists can collect tissue soon after a victim’s death and produce a DNA profile within hours. But most of the bodies from Rana Plaza were recovered days or weeks after the building collapsed, too late to collect usable samples, so bone shards or teeth were taken instead.

Bone must be decalcified before any usable material can be collected, a process that takes two weeks per sample. Usually, the small shaking machines are equipped to handle 15 sample test tubes at a time; now, the test tubes are stacked in groups of 30. When that process is completed, Mr. Akhteruzzaman said, the lab must buy software similar to that used after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, with the capacity of sorting through so many possible combinations.

Even then, some victims will probably never be identified. “In every disaster, that is the case,” Mr. Akhteruzzaman said. “You cannot find all the people.”

Hasibul, the boy looking for his father, lives in Magura, a village in the northern tier of the country. In 2011, his father, Asadur Zaman, started working as a security guard at Ether Tex, a fifth-floor garment factory in Rana Plaza. He visited Magura twice a year, and his wife and young son made occasional trips to see him. When the building collapsed, Mr. Zaman’s family assumed he was inside: one of his responsibilities was to unlock the factory so that workers could enter.

To make a DNA match, officials suggested that either Mr. Zaman’s mother or father provide a blood sample. But his mother had died recently, and his father had a breakdown after hearing about the building collapse. So Hasibul stepped forward, escorted by his uncle, who said the family’s future depended on proving a DNA match.

“Now they have a terrible life,” said the uncle, Tariqul Islam. “They have no other source of income. The prime minister announced she would give compensation to all the victims. But if we don’t have any official proof, we will not get any compensation.”

Friday 31 May 2013

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/31/world/asia/bangladeshi-lab-struggles-to-identify-rana-plazas-dead.html?_r=0

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Grim Task of Identifying Factories’ Dead Overwhelms Bangladeshi Lab


Inside a small government laboratory here, there are about 300 test tubes, each labeled with masking tape and containing an extracted tooth or a shard of bone. Day and night, dozens of these tubes rest on metal trays that vibrate with a motorized monotony. The shaking decalcifies the bone in a process that requires two weeks before material can be gleaned for a DNA profile.

Outside the laboratory, people are waiting. There are at least 301 unidentified victims of last month’s horrific collapse of the Rana Plaza factory building. Those test tubes represent the only chance of identifying them. More than 500 people have given blood samples in the hopes of finding a DNA match. On a recent morning, Hasibul Islam Reaz, 10, placed a spindly arm before a needle, his eyes widening as his blood drained through a thin tube into a syringe.

“If I give them blood,” the boy said softly, “I will learn where my father is, which body is his.”

First came the frantic search for survivors after Rana Plaza collapsed on April 24. Then came the grueling recovery of victims, with a death toll now at 1,129, the deadliest disaster in the history of the garment industry. Now, with the wreckage cleared, the slow, painstaking process of identifying bodies has become a wrenching exercise, bringing accusations of cover-ups, even as many families struggle to find loved ones and qualify for government compensation.

With its venomous politics and blood-soaked history, Bangladesh is rife with conspiracy theories under normal circumstances. In the Rana Plaza collapse, opposition leaders have claimed — without substantiation — that the government has hidden bodies. Activists have accused the government and industry leaders of intentionally stalling promised compensation payments to survivors and families of the dead.

The anger and controversy have only intensified the pressure on the small staff of the country’s National Forensic DNA Profiling Laboratory. Founded in 2006 with a grant from the Danish Embassy, the lab is now overwhelmed. Completing the DNA profiles could take months. New machines are needed to decalcify the bone samples. Approval is still pending for expensive software capable of sorting through the tens of thousands of possible DNA matches.

“To handle normal situations, the lab is O.K.,” said Sharif Akhteruzzaman, who oversees operations there. “But now a whole year’s caseload has come up, all of a sudden.”

From the moment Rana Plaza collapsed, the scale of the disaster outstripped the capacities of the Bangladeshi government. In the initial days, as dozens of bodies were being pulled hourly from the wreckage, a nearby high school served as a staging area for thousands of people looking for missing relatives or just gawking. Bodies were placed in plank coffins and sprayed with disinfectant as lines of people walked slowly past.

Shaikh Yusuf Harun, deputy commissioner for the district of Dhaka, said the chaos of the moment inevitably led to confusion — and some mistakes. Initially, 291 bodies could not be identified. Officials have also since discovered that 10 bodies were mistakenly turned over to the wrong families and buried in distant villages. In three of those cases, families later discovered that their missing relatives were alive, while in the other seven, remains were simply handed over to the wrong people. There are plans to exhume the bodies and take bone or teeth samples.

Some opportunists took advantage of the tumult. With the huge crowds and local reporters pressing forward, officials were sometimes reluctant to challenge someone who claimed a body. In at least two cases, officials handed over bodies as well as initial payments of 20,000 taka, or about $250, to people who pocketed the cash and dumped the corpses at the edge of the school grounds.

“It was a crisis,” Mr. Harun said. “There could have been a riot. Some officials had to hand over a body.”

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has announced a compensation package for families of those killed at Rana Plaza that could exceed $12,000, with the money coming from public and private sources. The amount is substantial, given that the minimum wage in the garment industry is $37 a month. Yet so far, only 150 families have received the first installment of about $1,100, according to Mr. Harun, prompting criticism that the government is purposely making it difficult for people to claim the money.

Such disputes over compensation are still dragging on from the fire in November that destroyed the Tazreen Fashions garment factory and killed 112 workers who had been making clothing for brands that included Walmart and Sears. One problem for families is merely proving that a relative worked in a factory: at Tazreen, just outside Dhaka, the flames that consumed many victims also destroyed their identification tags. And in the Rana Plaza collapse, rumors have swirled of bodies disappearing after being whisked away in trucks, prompting the leader of the political opposition to accuse the government of a cover-up.

“In Rana Plaza, we suspect the death toll is much higher,” said Jyotirmoy Barua, a lawyer who has been working with victims of the Tazreen Fashions and Rana Plaza disasters. “The only reason for lowering the number is to lower the compensation.”

But such accusations have been sharply rebutted by the government, and many others note that any coordinated effort to hide bodies would have been difficult, given the thousands of people who had rushed to the disaster site, including dozens of journalists filming every development.

“It was not possible,” Mr. Harun said of the rumors. “It is totally baseless.”

One reason for the slow distribution of compensation is that officials say they are struggling in some cases to determine who the rightful claimants are. Most garment workers migrated to the Dhaka region from rural villages. They often supported a spouse and children, and they also sent back money to help their parents.

Now, with the deaths of so many breadwinners, some families are desperate and fighting over the compensation. Mr. Harun said one woman, three months pregnant, lost her husband in the Rana Plaza collapse. She was given his body and his official documents, only to see his parents snatch the documents and make a claim for compensation.

“There are so many cases like this,” Mr. Harun said. “We need to sort them out individually.”

At the DNA laboratory, Mr. Akhteruzzaman said his staff needed two or three months to begin making matches. Ordinarily, scientists can collect tissue soon after a victim’s death and produce a DNA profile within hours. But most of the bodies from Rana Plaza were recovered days or weeks after the building collapsed, too late to collect usable samples, so bone shards or teeth were taken instead.

Bone must be decalcified before any usable material can be collected, a process that takes two weeks per sample. Usually, the small shaking machines are equipped to handle 15 sample test tubes at a time; now, the test tubes are stacked in groups of 30. When that process is completed, Mr. Akhteruzzaman said, the lab must buy software similar to that used after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, with the capacity of sorting through so many possible combinations.

Even then, some victims will probably never be identified. “In every disaster, that is the case,” Mr. Akhteruzzaman said. “You cannot find all the people.”

Hasibul, the boy looking for his father, lives in Magura, a village in the northern tier of the country. In 2011, his father, Asadur Zaman, started working as a security guard at Ether Tex, a fifth-floor garment factory in Rana Plaza. He visited Magura twice a year, and his wife and young son made occasional trips to see him. When the building collapsed, Mr. Zaman’s family assumed he was inside: one of his responsibilities was to unlock the factory so that workers could enter.

To make a DNA match, officials suggested that either Mr. Zaman’s mother or father provide a blood sample. But his mother had died recently, and his father had a breakdown after hearing about the building collapse. So Hasibul stepped forward, escorted by his uncle, who said the family’s future depended on proving a DNA match.

“Now they have a terrible life,” said the uncle, Tariqul Islam. “They have no other source of income. The prime minister announced she would give compensation to all the victims. But if we don’t have any official proof, we will not get any compensation.”

Friday 25 April 2014

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/31/world/asia/bangladeshi-lab-struggles-to-identify-rana-plazas-dead.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

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