Wednesday 29 January 2014

Boat capsizes in India's Bihar


At least three people have drowned and six others are missing after a boat capsized in the Ganges river in the eastern Indian state of Bihar.

The victims were all women, who were on their way to work on farms in the neighbouring state of Uttar Pradesh.

"Bodies of the three women have been recovered," Buxar District Magistrate Raman Kumar said.

Kumar said 22 women, mostly labourers, were in the boat when the accident took place late Tuesday.

Thirteen women were rescued when the boat, also laden with vegetables, sunk in Buxar district late on Tuesday.

Boats in India are often overloaded, and lax safety standards mean accidents are common on the river.

Three bodies were recovered by divers and 13 passengers were recued, he said and added that six women were still missing.

On Sunday, 21 people were killed when a tourist boat capsized off India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal.

Last July, 11 people drowned after a boat capsized in the flooded Kosi river in Bihar. Twenty-four others swam to safety.

In 2012, 108 people died after a ferry capsized during a storm in Assam.

In October 2010, at least 36 people died after an overloaded boat sank in the Ganges river in Bihar.

In 2009, a tourist boat carrying 76 people capsized in a lake in Kerala, killing at least 37.

Wednesday 29 January 2014

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/overcrowded-boat-capsizes-3-drown-hunt-on-for-11/448658-3-232.html

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7 passengers dead and 15 injured in Luxury bus and container collision at Thane


In the wee hours of Wednesday, a luxury bus rammed into a Petroleum container killing at least 7 passengers including the driver of the bus while a four wheeler behind the bus too rammed into it leading to oil spill and severe fire on the Mumbai Ahmedabad Highway near Varai phata.

The Bharat Petroleum container (MH 43 U 9201) was moving towards Gujarat and the driver halted the bus due to breakdown when the luxury double decker bus rammed into it killing the driver of the bus and other 6 persons on the spot. While, a four wheeler behind the bus too caught fire and the mangled remains of the bus and the car were shifted with the help of fire brigade and the Thane Rural police.

"The luxury bus driver did not notice the stationary bus and rammed into it the bus and car has beeb completely charred and the numbers of both the vehicles still haven't been ascertained" said a police official.

The driver of the Petroleum company is missing and we are trying to contact the family members of the deceased and have shifted the injured at Rural Hospital near Charoti, said Meghana Burande, Incharge, Manor police station.

After the accident heavy traffic jam led to major problems as the vehicles were diverted from the Wada-Bhiwandi road after the Thane rural police shut the road towards Gujarat.

Wednesday 29 January 2014

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-7-passengers-dead-and-15-injured-in-luxury-bus-and-container-collision-at-thane-1958084

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Andaman ferry disaster: Search for body of last victim still on


While the families of those who died in the Andamans boat tragedy have found a semblance of closure by receiving the bodies on Monday morning, one family is still at odds with the sea. Authorities in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands are yet to find the body of Suresh Sha of Kancheepuram.

Suresh Sha's brother Chandru is waiting in Port Blair, hoping for the body to wash ashore. "Locals tell me that the tide is high and the area is very windy. This will, hopefully, push the body to the coast," Chandru to TOI over the phone.

Local authorities and the ministry of shipping are searching for the body. "Five small boats and five ships have been patrolling the sea from Monday. Two helicopters have joined the search. Ministry officials have been giving me the hope that the body will be found by Wednesday morning," said Chandru.

On Monday night, Chandru saw what looked like a body floating near the shore. "As soon as I called the Andamans collector, helicopters rushed in," he said. Chandru's biggest fear is the crocodiles he spotted on the island. He is staying in the government quarters in Andamans.

Chandru was the first one in Kancheepuram to hear about the tragedy when his sister-in-law Gangabai called from the Andamans. She and her daughter Vinodhini were the only survivors among the six of his family members who went on a holiday there. Chandru lost his brother Suresh, his parents and niece in the accident.

Meanwhile in Kancheepuram, all the bodies have been cremated. "All the bodies have been handed over to the families. We provided assistance in the cremation," said Kancheepuram collectorate PRO Stanislaus. "We also distributed the compensation announced by the chief minister." He said the collectorate had bought large amounts of dried cow dung and firewood as they expected a number of cremations on the same day.

Survivors were welcomed back to Kancheepuram by hundreds of people on Monday. Of the 32 residents of Kancheepuram who left for the Andamans in a tour group, only 15 returned.

Wednesday 29 January 2014

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/Search-for-body-of-last-victim-still-on/articleshow/29514481.cms

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Sri Lanka mass grave toll reaches 50


Skeletal remains of at least 50 people have been dug out from a mass grave discovered in northeastern Sri Lanka, amid speculation that the remains were of Tamil civilians who had disappeared during the war with the LTTE.

Police spokesman and Senior Superintendent Ajith Rohana said further digging will be continued with the deployment of a team from the crime investigation department to assist in investigations.

Three more skulls were found today, Rohana said. With this, the total skeletal remains discovered stand at 50.

A team of forensic experts led by Judicial Medical Officer Dhananjaya Waidyaratne earlier stated that bodies had been buried in several layers at the site.

The state water entity's workers had stumbled upon the grave as they dug the ground to lay water supply connections late December last year in Thirukatheeswaram area in Mannar district.

The main Tamil party TNA-controlled Northern Provincial Council yesterday adopted a resolution to call for UN assistance at forensic excavations at the site.

The Tamil groups believe that the remains were those of the Tamil civilians who had disappeared during the three-decade conflict.

The resolution was moved by Tamil National Alliance's woman councillor Ananthy Saseetharan, whose husband Elilan was an LTTE political wing leader and is among those believed to have disappeared during the final battle in 2009.

This was the first discovery of a mass grave in the former conflict zone since the war ended. Digging of the site took place in the presence of magisterial and judicial medical officials after the discovery of the first four skeletal remains on December 21.

The police in an initial reaction said the area of the site had been under LTTE control for well over 15 years.

Since the end of the war, Sri Lanka has been facing international accusations of rights abuses.

Sri Lanka denies that its troops committed any war crimes whilst combating the LTTE. It has resisted calls to probe claims that over 40,000 ethnic minority Tamils were killed by the military during the final phase of the civil war that ended in 2009.

The UN Human Rights Council has passed two rights resolutions against Sri Lanka and a third one is expected in March.

Wednesday 29 January 2014

http://zeenews.india.com/news/south-asia/sri-lanka-mass-grave-toll-reaches-50_907489.html

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Mass grave recovered after El Salvador's gang 'truce'


In a room set apart from the scrubbed surfaces and autopsy tables of this city’s medical examiner’s office, two technicians in white coveralls are sifting through sacks of mud and death.

One technician carefully extracts a human vertebra. He brushes off the bone with what looks like a toothbrush, and then places the bone into a water basin.

The technicians “leave nothing untouched,” says Saul Quijada, the forensic anthropologist in charge. “Even the smallest item can be important.”

The sacks were trucked in from a mass grave discovered last December in the fields of Lourdes, a working-class district on this city’s outskirts. Authorities accuse the Barrio 18 street gang of digging the burial site in the remote and rugged fields to hide the remains of 44 people who’d been killed and dismembered elsewhere.

A March 2012 truce between Barrio 18 and its powerful rival, the Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, has been credited with slashing El Salvador’s homicides from more than 4,000 in 2011 to about 2,500 over the past two years.

But the discovery of the mass grave — the largest found since this country's 12-year civil war — has given ammunition to truce skeptics. They’ve noted that while murders were supposedly declining, disappearances were rising, to more than 1,000 last year. Crimes and killings, critics say, continued clandestinely all along.

And with only days to go before El Salvador’s presidential election on Sunday, politicians have seized on the truce as a potent wedge issue in a nation terrorized by violence.

“All these people were murdered during the so-called truce,” says Miguel Fortin Magana, director of the medical examiner’s office in San Salvador.

And these gang issues matter well beyond Salvadoran borders.

Both Barrio 18 and MS-13 formed in Latino migrant communities in Southern California. Mass deportations by the United States pushed them into Central America in the 1990s. The "maras," as the gangs are called, found fertile ground in postwar El Salvador, where displaced and broken families crowded into cities, making for easy recruiting, and where police were ill equipped to handle the spike in crime.

The gangs spread to neighboring Honduras and Guatemala, and their foot soldiers now number in the tens of thousands — helping make this the world's most violent region outside a war zone.

Offshoots of the maras continue to thrive in immigrant enclaves of the US and Canada, but with gang leaders giving the orders from squalid tropical prisons.

El Salvador’s gang truce was an unorthodox response to years of hard-line policies that failed to stem the bloodshed. Gang leaders, a bishop, a human rights activist and — from a careful distance — government officials brokered the cease-fire in secret negotiations. The agreement allowed key gang leaders to be moved to lower security prisons.

The government has never acknowledged an active role, and outgoing President Mauricio Funes continues to deny that it took part, even after a recent leak of audiotapes made it clear that negotiators had the backing of Funes' top security official at that time.

Gang leaders, who met recently for the first time in seven months, claim that the truce remains in place. But murders have risen sharply in recent weeks, with about eight killings daily and a surprising number of massacres. Neighborhood walls that had been symbolically scrubbed of gang graffiti at the truce’s onset are now littered with tags.

In a recent poll conducted by the University Institute of Public Opinion at the Central American University in San Salvador, nearly 70 percent of respondents said they had little or no confidence in the truce.

“What has been consistent over the last year and a half is the rejection of [the truce] by the public,” says Jeannette Aguilar, the institute’s director.

The truce has become the central campaign issue of the conservative opposition, the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA). Its presidential candidate, Norman Quijano, has said the government made a “pact with criminals.”

In solemn television ads, Quijano claims he's the only candidate able to defeat the gangs. “I know what has to be done, and you do too,” he deadpans, without saying what that is.

Salvador Sanchez Ceren, the candidate for the governing left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), has been vague about whether he supports the truce, though he was vice president when the negotiations took place. In debates he’s been loath to even mention it, and when pressed denies his government’s involvement.

Steven Dudley, co-director of InSight Crime, a website that tracks organized crime in the Americas, says the FMLN’s vacillating and lack of transparency on the truce has hurt the process and made it difficult for other organizations, such as churches and NGOs, to provide the support needed for the truce to succeed.

“Own it or don’t,” he said of the ruling party’s stance. “This game they have played has been very counterproductive.”

Little is known about the gangs themselves, which are estimated to have about 60,000 members in El Salvador and are often portrayed as “a massive and faceless enemy,” Dudley says. The truce, he said, served as a rare opportunity to understand “who these guys are and how much reach they have,” and to engage them in ongoing conversations.

“By mishandling this," he says, the Salvadoran government "could shut the doors for a very long time.”

San Salvador’s medical examiners have so far processed the remains of 25 people from the mass grave in Lourdes. Of the six bodies identified, Dr. Fortin says, not all were gang members. A fruit vendor from the area was among them.

What’s more, authorities know of two other suspected mass graves. One, Fortin says, lies within the district of Soyapango, an area where gang territories are fought over constantly, and the other is in the heart of San Salvador’s downtown.

In the medical examiner’s office, the violence that gangs can unleash appears in stark relief.

In one room, the skeletal remains of three people are laid out on long tables.

Quijada, the forensic anthropologist, fits together three neck vertebrae and points out sharp irregular angles on the uppermost one. The splintering, he explains, most likely occurred as the person was hacked at with a machete.

“They cut here and they cut here until it was completely decapitated,” he says.

Investigators are leaving 19 bodies in the ground at Lourdes until they can start excavating again next month. Completing work on this mass grave “could take us until the middle of the year,” Quijada says.

“That's if there are not others, and it appears there are.”

Wednesday 29 January 2014

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/140128/el-salvador-mass-grave-maras-gangs-election

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Regional co-operation necessary to identify missing persons


With thousands of people still missing from the 1990s conflicts in the region, countries in Southeast Europe must be diligent in their co-operation to solve the issue, experts said.

According to the International Commission for Missing Persons, there are still more than 14,000 people unaccounted for from Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Croatia, Kosovo and Macedonia.

Of the approximately 40,000 total missing in the region after the conflicts, an estimated 30,000 were from BiH, 5,500 from Croatia, 4,400 from Kosovo and 23 from Macedonia. Of those still missing, approximately 10,000 are from BiH, 2,000 from Croatia, 1,900 from Kosovo and 13 from Macedonia.

Kathryne Bomberger, the director general of the International Commission for Missing Persons, said that finding and identifying those still missing is complicated because the conflicts took place when there were no borders in the region.

"We have often had cases where the remains of people from Bosnia and Herzegovina were in the territory of Serbia, Croatians disappeared from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbians on Croatian territory and the like. One of the ways to solve these issues is a good regional co-operation and that is at a very high level," Bomberger said.

The governments in the region must remain vigilant in their efforts to account for the missing regardless of their ethnic, religious or national origin in a transparent and accountable manner, she added.

Co-operation efforts include following a joint road map on proceedings, information sharing, a mutual DNA database and common methodology and transparency in exhuming mass graves.

Kosovo and Serbia have also been co-operating on the issue.

A gravesite in Raska, Serbia, was opened last month, in which the bodies of 250 Albanians are believed to be buried.

The investigation leading to the discovery was a joint effort by Kosovo, Serbia and EULEX.

Officials from Kosovo and Serbia are expected to meet soon to discuss how to proceed with further excavations.

"We have had cases of direct co-operation in order to accelerate the procedures, but due to the political circumstances, this co-operation remains within a non-formal format," Kushtrim Gara, who leads the administrative unit of the Kosovo Commission for Missing Persons, told SETimes.

Serbia Prime Minister Ivica Dacic said his government is committed to solving the issue.
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"The search for the missing will continue until light is shed on each and every crime," he said.

However, some say more action needs to be taken.

"Great progress has been made, but it still not enough to bring peace to the families of the missing," Lejla Cengic, a spokesperson for the Institute for Missing Persons in BiH, told SETimes.

She said that a central register of missing persons would help accelerate the process.

"A regional list of missing persons is one of the most important issues for the future. This year has been declared the year of missing persons in all countries of the region in order to speed up the process of finding those who are still missing," Cengic said.

The co-operation agreement that was presented at a December 2011 meeting between the Missing Persons Institute of BiH, the Directorate for Detained and Missing in Croatia and the Commission for Missing Persons in Serbia, has yet to be signed.

"We are missing co-operation on a political level. Signing the co-operation agreement between Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia would mean supporting the engagement of police and military records of all countries. This will enhance the joint exhumation process and lead to the resolution of an even greater number of missing persons in the region," Amor Masovic, a member of the Institute for Missing Persons in BiH board of directors, told SETimes.

"Globally, this is an unprecedented achievement. Nowhere in the world after a conflict have so many missing persons been located and identified. This is a joint success for the families of missing, local authorities and the international community," said Peter Sorensen, EU special representative in BiH.

Wednesday 29 January 2014

http://www.setimes.com/cocoon/setimes/xhtml/en_GB/features/setimes/features/2014/01/28/feature-01

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Landslides kill 19 villagers, 10 missing on Indonesia’s Java island


Two landslides triggered by torrential rain killed at least 19 people and left 10 others missing on Indonesia’s main island of Java, a government official said Tuesday.

Five houses were buried when mud rolled down from surrounding hills just after midnight in Mekarsari village of East Java’s Jombang district, said National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho.

He said rescuers pulled seven bodies from mounds of mud and were still searching for 10 others reportedly missing under tons of debris.

“Lack of equipment hampered our rescue efforts for those who are still missing and feared dead,” said Nugroho.

Authorities struggled to get tractors and bulldozers over washed-out roads. Television footage showed hundreds of police, soldiers and residents digging through debris with their hands, shovels and hoes.

Tuesday’s fatal landslides were the second in several days on densely populated Java island.

Mud and rocks cascaded down hills in Central Java’s Kudos district late Friday, leaving at least 12 villagers dead.

Seasonal rains and high tides in recent days have caused dozens of landslides and widespread flooding across much of Indonesia, a chain of 17,000 islands where millions of people live in mountainous areas or near fertile flood plains near rivers.

Wednesday 29 January 2014

http://globalnews.ca/news/1112160/landslides-kill-19-villagers-10-missing-on-indonesias-java-island/

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Remains of 55 found at former Florida reform school


For decades, relatives of some boys dispatched to the notorious Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys have struggled to find out what became of them after they went missing amid reports of beatings, torture and sexual assaults at the reform school in Marianna, Fla.

On Tuesday, researchers and forensic anthropologists moved a step closer to providing answers. The remains of 55 people have been uncovered on school grounds, University of South Florida researchers announced – five more than previous field work had indicated and 24 more than listed in school records.

"Locating 55 burials is a significant finding, which opens up a whole new set of questions for our team,’’ said Erin Kimmerle, a University of South Florida associate professor and forensic anthropologist who has led researchers on a nearly two-year project aimed at uncovering lingering mysteries at the school, which operated from 1900 to 2011.

From September to December of last year, researchers led excavations at or near Boot Hill, an unmarked cemetery on school grounds. Using ground-penetrating radar, DNA samples and search dogs, they probed for unmarked graves of boys reported missing over the years.

Bones, teeth and other artifacts were recovered for all 55 bodies, Kimmerle said Tuesday. Bone and teeth samples will be submitted for DNA testing. Meanwhile, researchers are attempting to collect DNA from survivors of boys sent to the school as "incorrigible,’’ or for truancy or petty crimes.

So far, DNA has been collected from 11 surviving family members of former Dozier residents. Researchers are seeking DNA from 42 more. Anyone with information may call the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office at (813) 247-8678.

The grave sites are not marked; some remains have been found in woods nearby. Thirty-one white crosses that dot the burial ground were erected in the 1990s to commemorate the unnamed boys buried there.

Kimmerle said researchers would attempt to verify the identities, ages and histories of the remains, as well as the timing and circumstances of their deaths. Excavations will resume in the coming months, she said.

"All of the analysis needed to answer these important questions are yet to be done. But it is our intention to answer as many of these questions as possible,’’ she said.

Survivors who attended the school have described beatings, torture sessions, rapes and the disappearances of boys, many of them after they were taken from dormitories or other school buildings for punishment.

Roger Dean Kiser, now 67, of Brunswick, Ga., told The Times in October that he was sent to Dozier at age 12 in 1959 and stayed for two years. He wrote a book about the school, "The White House Boys,’’ named for a house on school grounds where he said boys were beaten.

Kiser said he was twice beaten bloody with a leather whip reinforced by a slab of sheet metal. Other boys were beaten so badly that their underwear was pounded into their bare skin. Many were sodomized or forced to perform oral sex on staff members, he said.

Boys were beaten for such infractions as spitting, cursing or talking back. Staff members placed bets on who could draw blood first.

The bodies of some boys were burned in the school incinerator, Kiser said. He said another boy, Johnny Gaddy, told him he had seen a severed human hand in the "hog bath’’ where leftover food was dumped to feed pigs. Boys were rented out to work without pay for neighboring farmers and timber companies.

"They’re going to find a lot of bodies out there, and there are a lot more bodies they’ll never find,’’ Kiser predicted in the October interview.

Records at Dozier say some students died of influenza, pneumonia, tuberculosis, knife wounds or in a devastating 1914 fire.

Historical documents suggest that more than 100 boys died at the school, Kimmerle said in October.

An investigation by the U.S. Justice Department documented some of the abuse and led to the closure of the school. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement concluded in 2010 that, although it found dozens of graves, there was insufficient evidence to pursue criminal charges.

Wednesday 29 January 2014

http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-dozier-reform-school-bodies-20140128,0,4502419.story

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Official death toll climbs to 17 after Quebec seniors' home fire; 15 still missing


Firefighters and police officers, some on their hands and knees, braved bitter cold for yet another day to find more bodies in the rubble of a seniors’ home that was engulfed in flames last week.

Quebec provincial police said Tuesday that 17 people are now confirmed dead and 15 remain missing after the blaze that ravaged Residence du Havre in L’Isle-Verte in eastern Quebec early last Thursday.

“We will keep going until all 32 people have been found,” said Quebec provincial police Lt. Michel Brunet.

Four people have been formally identified by the coroner’s office so far.

Authorities say they are satisfied with the progress of their work during the last six days.

Weather has been a major hurdle, forcing crews to take regular breaks to warm up from the bone-chilling cold.

Special machines also had to be brought in to melt thick ice that coated the ruins after the fire. Police have had to approach the rubble carefully, not just to avoid harming any bodies within the structure but also to preserve evidence that may allow investigators to determine a cause for the blaze.

About 65 per cent of the site has been examined. Brunet said it is difficult to say how long it will take to complete the effort because large hunks of debris have to be removed carefully.

The delicacy of the effort was reflected in the large construction shovels that have been brought in which carefully scratched at the ground to remove rubble.

Smaller tools such as rakes, brooms and spades were also being used by the workers, who also include pathologists from the Quebec coroner’s office.

Quebec provincial police spokeswoman Ann Mathieu says the searches are progressing well and about 50 people are combing the rubble of the building in teams.

Earlier Tuesday, media were granted increased access to the remnants of the Residence du Havre to see the efforts in the community about 240 kilometres northeast of Quebec City.

Health and social services officials also said six people remain in hospital. Nine others have found new homes and five people are expected to be relocated on Wednesday.

Provincial police also said the public has responded to their requests for any photos or videos taken of the fire and they will begin sifting through them in the coming days.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is among those who are expected to attend a commemorative ceremony in L’Isle-Verte this coming Saturday.

Wednesday 29 January 2014

http://www.citynews.ca/2014/01/29/17-dead-15-missing-in-fire-at-quebec-seniors-home/

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