Monday 19 August 2013

‘Himalayan region recipe for disaster’


Uttarakhand disaster was just one of 76 disasters that hits Himalayan region on an average, killing 36,000 people and affecting 178 million people every year, a United Nations-affiliated organisation has told the Planning Commission.

Nepal-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development in a presentation to the panel this week said that India’s Himalayan region was hit by 532 natural disasters between 1990-2012, second only to 670 in the Chinese part of the mountain range.

Most of these disasters were trans-boundary in nature, meaning a cloud burst in China ravaged lives in India, which is worst affected because of huge population living on downstream of water flowing from Himalayas.

The Hindu-Kush Himalayan region is source for ten major river basins and home to 1.3 billion people

Monday 19 August 2013

http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/Uttarakhand/Himalayan-region-recipe-for-disaster/Article1-1109641.aspx

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Seventh body recovered from INS Sindhurakshak


Rescuers from the Indian Navy on Monday extricated one more body from INS Sindhurakshak, taking the number of victims recovered from the fire-devastated submarine to seven even as professional savers from reputed companies commenced preliminary survey activities.

According to Naval sources, the body has been taken to state-run J J Hospital for post-mortem.

Battling difficult conditions, the Navy had till Sunday extricated badly charred bodies of six of the 18 victims trapped in the sunken vessel. Also, they had managed to gain access to the forward compartment of the ill-fated submarine by breaking open the jammed hatches.

Earlier, sources had said the Navy divers were carrying out the task of searching within the submarine by “feeling each inch” due to zero visibility within flooded compartments to locate the missing bodies and mark a probable route to be used for further rescue operations.

18 Navy personnel, including three officers, were on board the Russia-made submarine when a devastating fire ripped through the frontline underwater craft following serial explosions on Tuesday midnight.

The Navy has instituted a Board of Inquiry to probe the cause of the explosions and fire which is expected to submit its report within four weeks.

Mumbai Police have also registered a case of accidental death in connection with the worst peacetime tragedy suffered by the Navy.

The Navy medical authorities had also started the process of collecting blood samples of family members of the 18 personnel aboard the vessel.

The blood samples would be needed for DNA profiling of the incinerated bodies of the victims, to establish the identities.

Dental tests on to identify recovered bodies of sailors

While operations are on to fish out the bodies of Navy personnel feared dead in the INS Sindhurakshak disaster on August 14, a battery of tests are being conducted on the bodies of the deceased at naval hospital, INHS Asvini, and the state-run JJ Hospital.

The bodies were sent to INHS Asvini in Navy Nagar, from where they were later transferred to JJ Hospital in Byculla. Till Sunday evening, JJ hospital in Byculla had conducted post-mortems on six bodies.

There is hope that the bodies will be identified through their dental records, which are available with the Navy.

“Doctors at INHS Asvini have sent the bodies for post-mortem after taking records of dental patterns from the bodies. The patterns will be matched with the archived dental records to expedite identification of bodies,” said a doctor at the forensic medicine department from JJ Hospital.

The doctors at forensic medicine department in JJ Hospital are also performing diatom tests on the bodies, which will help ascertain if a deceased died before drowning or after.

“Whenever there are signs of drowning, unicellular algae from the localised water — in this case, the sea — enter the body. We are checking the extent of diatom spread in the bodies of the personnel and will match it with samples of sea water to ascertain if death occurred after drowning,” said another doctor from the department of forensic medicine at JJ Hospital.

The doctor added that they are checking for the presence of diatoms in the liver, spleen, heart and lungs of the deceased.

“In cases where death occurs due to drowning, diatoms are found in peripheral organs like the spleen and liver. This is because the heart, which is still beating as the person drowns, pumps the diatom-laden water inhaled through the lungs to the liver and spleen,” said the doctor.

However, in cases where bodies are thrown into the water after drowning, blood circulation has stopped before water enters the lungs and the presence of diatoms will be restricted to the lungs and heart, explained the doctor.

The bodies that have reached JJ Hospital for autopsies will be lodged in the hospital’s cabinet cold storage capacity, maintained at the temperature of 2-4°C, as the morgue in naval hospital INHS Asvini does not have the wherewithal to maintain such low temperatures, said a source.

Bone and tooth samples from the bodies have been sent for DNA analysis at state-run forensic laboratory in Kalina.

Monday 19 August 2013

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/seventh-body-recovered-from-ins-sindhurakshak/article5038510.ece?homepage=true

http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/1876412/report-ins-sindhurakshak-disaster-dental-tests-on-to-identify-recovered-bodies-of-sailors

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24 killed in Sudan gold mine collapse


At least 24 people were killed after a gold mine collapsed in Sudan's Northern State, Khartoum's Akhir Lahza daily reported Monday.

"Twenty-four people have been killed at Alboom, one of the civil gold exploration sites in Dalgo area in Northern State, after a 160-meter deep gold mine collapsed," the report said.

"All attempts to discover the bodies have failed as the gold mine collapsed more than three times," the paper quoted an eyewitness as saying.

It added that the concerned authorities were notified with the accident, urging to prohibit exploration at the old gold mines to protect citizens.

Gold mine collapse accidents recently recurred across Sudan, the last of them was in North Darfur State in which scores were killed.

A media report said production from gold mines is an important revenue source for the cash-strapped Sudan government.

Mining produced 41 tonnes of gold worth $2.5 billion in January-November last year.

Monday 19 August 2013

http://www.china.org.cn/world/2013-08/19/content_29761976.htm

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INS Sindhurakshak: Forensic lab to prioritize Navy DNA samples


The severely shortstaffed Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) at Kalina will prioritize the DNA profiling of the sailors' bodies retrieved from INS Sindhurakshak and try to send its reports in a fortnight.

The FSL has 1,500 samples that need DNA profiling. However , it will give precedence to the bodies found on the sub. The lab has got samples of five crewmen after their autopsies were performed at J J Hospital; the sixth sample is yet to be received. The lab will start work from Monday.

Director Dr MK Malve said all efforts will be made to provide reports in a fortnight. Viscera samples though will take longer to be evaluated. At least 10,000 viscera samples are lying in state forensic labs for testing. Insiders said the reports cannot be sent sooner partly because there is only one machine for genetic analysis and partly because there is just one senior officer at the helm of DNA fingerprinting in the Kalina lab.

The biology-serology department , which covers DNA testing, is among the busiest. It receives at least 50 samples a month. An analyst said that, given the case sensitivity, samples from the sub accident will be checked twice.

Monday 19 August 2013

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Forensic-lab-to-prioritize-navy-samples/articleshow/21907964.cms

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India train accident kills 35 after ploughing into a crowd of Hindu pilgrims


At least 35 people have been killed in eastern India after a train rammed into a crowd of pilgrims and dozens more are injured, a senior police officer told AFP today.

“Until now we have information that 35 people have been killed in the incident and dozens are injured,” S.K. Bharadwaj, an additional director general of police who is overseeing security at the crash site, said.

An Indian express train had ploughed into a crowd of Hindu pilgrims in the country’s east, killing the 35 and triggering a riot as angry crowds went on the rampage, officials said.

The pilgrims were crossing the tracks at a station in the state of Bihar when the interstate passenger train ran into them, injuring another 12 people, police and Indian Railways officials said.

“Until now we have reports (from the ground) of 15 bodies and over a dozen others injured,” local railway chief Arun Malik told AFP earlier.

“We suspect the toll may rise later in the day because we are not getting all the information from the site because of angry agitation by local people,” Malik said.

Crowds converged on the Rajya Rani Express, setting carriages on fire and ransacking Dharhara station, some 200 km from the state capital Patna, Malik said.

“Six carriages have been set on fire and the station has been ransacked by the mob. Our staff have fled the station fearing attacks,” he said.

A senior railways official said it appeared the pilgrims were not aware of the incoming train.

“Two trains were already stationary on other tracks and the Rajya Rani Express was given permission to pass,” Arunendra Kumar, chairman of the national railway board, told reporters in New Delhi.

“The accident occurred because some people left the platform of the station and came on the tracks,” Kumar said.

Hundreds of thousands of Hindu devotees make annual pilgrimages to holy sites, including the devotees who trek each year through treacherous mountain passes and along icy streams to reach the holy Amarnath Cave Shrine located at an altitude of 3857m, where a Shiva Lingam, an ice stalagmite shaped as a phallus and symbolising the Hindu God Shiva, stands for worship.

There are hundreds of accidents on the railways annually.

In 2012, a government report said that almost 15,000 people were killed every year crossing India’s rail, which it described as an annual “massacre” owing to poor safety standards.

Pedestrians guilty of “unlawful trespassing” walked across the tracks at many unofficial crossing points, the report said, adding that about 6,000 of the deaths occurred in congested Mumbai alone.

Attempts to stop people riding on the roofs of trains have largely failed. Vehicles routinely drive around barriers at crossings, and passengers are often seen hanging out of open doors in the carriages.

The data is not broken down, but a vast majority of these deaths are people falling from the open doors of carriages or being hit on the tracks, which are mostly unsecured.

One of India’s worst rail accidents was in 1981 when a train plunged into a river, also in Bihar, killing an estimated 800 people.

Monday 19 August 2013

http://www.themalaymailonline.com/world/article/indian-train-runs-over-pilgrims-kills-at-least-10

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Coast Guard: Cebu maritime tragedy death toll rises to 52


The death toll from last weekend's collision of a passenger vessel and a cargo ship in Cebu waters rose to 42 as search operations continued Monday, the Philippine Coast Guard said.

As of 10:50 a.m., the Coast Guard said 52 bodies had been recovered while 68 are still missing and the subject of search and rescue operations.

Some 750 passengers had been rescued so far, it added.

Earlier Monday, the Coast Guard resumed search operations for possible survivors and for bodies of the victims of last Friday's collision.

Last Friday, the passenger ship MV Saint Thomas Aquinas 1 sank after colliding with the cargo vessel MV Sulpicio Express 7 off Cebu.

The Maritime Industry Authority suspended the vessels of 2GO, owner of the MV St. Thomas Aquinas, and Philippine Span Asia Carrier Corp., owner of the Sulpicio Express 7.

On Sunday, a television report said an oil spill believed to have come from MV Saint Thomas Aquinas 1 has reached the shorelines of Cordova town in Cebu.

In his report on GMA News TV's Balitanghali, Jun Veneracion said the oil spill has already affected the town's mangrove area.

Quoting residents, Veneracion said the mangrove could die within one to three months if the affected area is not cleared of the oil spill

Monday 19 August 2013

http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/322651/news/regions/coast-guard-cebu-maritime-tragedy-death-toll-rises-to-42

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27 dead, 41 missing in Yemen as flood sweeps wedding party


A Yemeni wedding party on Saturday turned into a disaster after floods inundated southern Yemen, causing the death of 27 people and 41 more lost when the vehicle with the wedding party was swept away. The vehicles were driving across Wadi Nakhla, a valley flooded by the monsoon rains, between Taiz City and Ibb province.

Among the victims are three women and four children aboard three vehicles that were accompanying the bride to her new house across Wadi Nakhla. The bride, fortunately survived the accident.

Besides ruining the wedding party and killing relatives of the bride, the monsoon also created flash floods that have killed at least 10 other Yemenis in the past two days and damaged crops.

Twelve bodies were also found in Udayn district, in the central province of Ibb but many motorists are still missing after their cars were carried away by floods, another official said.

Two women were also killed in flash floods in northern provinces, local officials said.

Yemen, at the southwestern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, is prone to floods triggered by monsoon downpours that cause massive damage due to the lack of infrastructure in the most impoverished Arab country.

Monday 19 August 2013

http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/499774/20130819/27-dead-41-missing-yemen-flood-sweeps.htm

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Ceremony marks 25 years since Ballygawley bus bomb


Some of those who treated the victims of the Ballygawley bus bombing have joined a special commemoration to mark the 25th anniversary of the atrocity this morning (Sunday).

Eight soldiers were killed when the 200lb bomb was detonated at the Newtownsaville junction of the A5 just before 12.30am on Saturday August 20 1988.

The bombing was the worst single loss involving British troops in the North since the Narrow Water attack which claimed the lives of 18 soldiers on August 27 1979.

The Ulster Bus coach had been carrying 39 soldiers of the first battalion of the British Army’s Light Infantry Regiment returning to the camp in Omagh after a short break in Britain.

Picking the soldiers up at Aldergrove Airport, the bus, driven by a soldier, came under attack when an IRA unit lying in wait denoted 200lbs of Semtex and fertilizer by the roadside at the townland of Curr, nine miles from Omagh.

The bus had just passed the bomb’s position as it exploded, sending the unarmoured vehicle careering down the road, catapulting the dead and injured in every direction, before it came to a rest in the ditch against an ash tree.

Among the first onto that scene of panic and pandemonium which ensued were two bus loads of bandsmen from Omagh Protestant Boys and Derry’s Star of the Valley, returning from an event in Portadown.

They were soon joined in the damp darkness by local people reacting to the massive explosion. Their efforts were later bolstered by the arrival of the emergency services, when the scale of the devastation became apparent.

In all, six bodies were laid out in the middle of the road, with the rest rushed to hospitals in Omagh and Dungannon. Two more soldiers would join the list of the dead, with 27 injured.

The dead were Jayson Burfitt (19), Richard Greener (21), Mark Norsworthy (18), Stephen Wilkinson (18), Jason Winter (19), Blair Bishop (19), Alexander Lewis (18) and Peter Bullock (21). All had been returning to Tyrone to complete six months of a two year tour.

Monday 18 August 2013

http://ulsterherald.com/2013/08/18/ceremony-to-mark-25-uears-since-ballygawley-bus-bomb/

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Casket 5056: The unidentified Palestinian


Exhumed from an Israeli-numbered grave to be handed over to his family for proper burial, the man in "Casket 5056" lies in a Palestinian morgue a year on - unidentified and unclaimed.

Since 1967, Israel has been withholding the bodies of an unknown number of Palestinians interred in numbered instead of named graves. The Palestinian Campaign to retrieve the bodies of Palestinian and Arab war victims and determine the fate of the missing has documented more than 60 cases of missing Palestinians and about 370 others buried in numbered graves in Israeli-controlled cemeteries.

In May 2012, Israel handed the Palestinian Authority (PA) 91 bodies it had been holding for decades. They were all buried except the man in Casket 5056, whom Israel said was Nasser al-Bouz.

Nasser, who would be 48 years old today, was on Israel's most-wanted list for establishing Fatah's military wing during the First Intifada. In July 1989, his family said he received a message from then PLO chairman Yasser Arafat urging him to head to Tunisia for his safety. He was last seen alive near his hometown of Nablus in August 1989.

"We were told he's in an Israeli secret prison," Wael al-Bouz, Nasser's brother, told Al Jazeera. "Some said he was in a Jordanian prison. Others told us they met him in Germany."



Reports about Nasser's whereabouts contradicted each other. The family, however, was eager to learn anything they thought could help determine his fate. "We knew a lot of the reports were rumours," Wael said. "But we were lost. We wanted to believe he was alive."

The family said Israel never acknowledged detaining or killing Nasser. When his brothers learned his name was on the list of bodies Israel was handing over to the PA last year, they were shocked.

The wrong person

Although they were to receive Nasser in a coffin, his brothers thought they would finally get closure. But it wasn't long before their wound was reopened. "When we opened the casket, we knew the remains were not for Nasser," Wael said.

The family was told that the remains were of a Palestinian killed in May 1989 - three months before the family said they last saw Nasser. That aside, dental records, marks from gunshot wounds, and the clothes size made the family even more suspicious.

DNA tests were performed in Jordan, twice. The results both times came back negative: the remains did not belong to Nasser al-Bouz. Worse yet, the remains in Casket 5056, which the Israelis handed over as Nasser al-Bouz, were found to belong to more than one person.

Lawyers at the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center said it was not the first such case. DNA tests had to be performed multiple times in five other cases of Palestinians buried in numbered graves, before the remains were matched with the corresponding details in Israeli files.

"This is indicative of other mistakes," said Issam Aruri, director of the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center. Bodies in numbered graves are often buried in adjacent rows. The tombs are shallow and bulldozers are used whenever an exhumation takes place. Until 2000, the bodies were not buried in boxes, rather interred in graves with metal plates indicating codes of classified files.

"What they did with non-Jewish bodies - they have this kind of discrimination - is that they don't admit that we are entitled to the same rights and to the same dignity, whether alive or dead."

Not far from Nablus, another Palestinian family has been waiting to properly bury its son for 33 years.

Anis Doleh of Qalqilya died in the Israeli prison of Askalan. In August 1980, he collapsed in his prison cell of a heart attack after joining a 30-day hunger strike.

The family tried to retrieve his body from the Israeli authorities several times. They received answers such as that Anis was released on August 31, 1980 - the date he died.

Futile correspondence

For years, the family was caught in a vicious cycle of futile correspondence with the Israeli authorities.

The family petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court to demand the release of Anis' remains, armed by letters he sent while in prison, reports from the ICRC that Doleh was imprisoned and died while in custody, as well as a reference for a post-mortem issued by the Israeli Abu Kabir Forensic Institute dating back to May 3, 1982.

The appeal was turned down in March 2013. In its decision, the Israeli court said that it has been too long since Doleh's death, and given that the search results of various Israeli authorities didn't yield anything, there would be no use in issuing a decision in favour of the family's demand to release Anis' remains.

"They're lying," declared Hasan Doleh, Anis' brother. "He can't just evaporate." The family is not excluding any options. "Did they steal his organs?" Hasan asked. "Did they use his body for medical training?"

Although there is no indication to what might have happened to Anis' remains, Doleh's fears were rendered legitimate a couple of years ago, when Israeli pathologists admitted they harvested organs from dead bodies without permission of their families.

When asked for a justification of the mistakes made, the Israeli army said transferring bodies to the Palestinian Authority was a gesture of goodwill.

"The bodies in question were transferred to the PA bearing the same names as they were given upon their burial," the Israeli army said in a statement to Al Jazeera. "The PA agreed to accept the bodies without conducting a preliminary DNA test."

Because of this, the Jerusalem Center filed another petition earlier this year to the Israeli Supreme Court, this time demanding the establishment of a DNA database.

The Israeli authorities are expected to take samples from the bodies they are withholding, ensure the remains in each casket belong to one person and match the results with their records, Aruri explained. But he is not hopeful. "All we need to fold this page is some effort and good will," he said. "The Israelis are showing neither."

Earlier, the Israeli authorities had offered to hand over about 80 Palestinian corpses. The families were reluctant to receive them, and the Jerusalem Center advised the PA against accepting them - because they were to be handed over unidentified.

"We don't want to get them in a pile," Aruri said. "We don't want to exhume bodies from Israeli-numbered graves to bury them in Palestinian-numbered graves."

Unidentified and unclaimed

At the Abu-Dis Institute of Forensic Medicine lies a body of the man thought to be Nasser al-Bouz. "Technically, the remains can be kept here for another year or two," said Dr Saber al-Aloul, head of the institute.

Since they are unidentified and unclaimed, the remains are to be kept accessible at the morgue for possible DNA matching in the near future. "The procedures to dig a grave are religiously, legally and technically exhausting," al-Aloul said.

According to al-Aloul, the remains belong to a male between 30 and 40 years of age, who died at least 15 years ago. The man in question apparently died of multiple gunshots to his head. "No injuries were found in upper or lower limbs, reinforcing doubts that this person might have been executed," al-Aloul told Al Jazeera.

Somewhere, a family of a Palestinian or an Arab may be living the agony of al-Bouz's family and the fears of the Dolehs - not knowing whether their son is dead or alive. They endure the painful wait to properly bury a loved one, and have his name engraved on a tombstone - where they go to visit, plant a rose, and say a prayer.

Monday 19 August 2013

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/07/201373184119455266.html

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