Monday 24 February 2014

The Mass Graves of Bor, South Sudan


A handful of volunteers in almost deserted Bor, capital of South Sudan's Jonglei State, remove dead bodies from homes, put them in body bags donated by the International Committee of the Red Cross, and place them in mass graves.

Since the emergence of an armed rebellion in mid-December, government troops have lost and won control of the town several times. On 23 February, the army said it had repelled further attempts to take Bor.

"Maybe 60 percent of Bor has been cleared," said Jonglei's acting governor Aquilla Lam, returning from the burial of 134 people the same morning.

John Prendergast, director of the anti-genocide Enough Project, said he visited three other mass graves the week before IRIN's visit, where "hundreds of people have been buried...

"Every day, dozens of new corpses are discovered in abandoned homes. The body bags prepared by medical workers appear along the roads with relentless regularity."

Some white body bags still lie along the main routes.

"Because most of the town has been abandoned, there is no way to know how many dead are still to be counted," Prendergast added.

Hundreds are awaiting burial at a site where diggers from the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) are clearing more space in a field that used to serve as a cemetery for a few dozen people who died of diseases.

Crumpled sheets of metal and piles of litter are all that remain of the market in Bor; burnt huts - some said to contain the bodies of their owners - line pockmarked dirt roads.

Estimates for the numbers killed across South Sudan since mid-December vary widely: in January, the International Crisis Group suggested 10,000; some diplomats put the toll at ten times that figure.

Fleeing aid and church workers talk of devastation in towns such as Bentiu and Malakal in South Sudan's oil producing states of Unity and Upper Nile where rebels have massed and are still attacking.

Access to bodies difficult

Thousands are thought to have been killed in Bor and surrounding areas, but access to the bodies is almost impossible in five of Jonglei's 11 counties where rebels are still operating.

"We have people going house to house to house looking [for bodies], but we don't have any vehicles," said acting governor Lam.

He is reluctant to give a figure but thinks that "it's over 1,000 people" killed in Bor centre alone. He said that some of the Nuer White Army fighters that attacked Bor were as young as 10 or 12 and "armed only with spears". Many were gunned down as government and Ugandan troops tried to protect the town.

Around 74,000 people - mostly from Bor and surrounding counties - fled to Minkamen in neighbouring Lakes State. Some escaped the gunmen by paying boatmen to whisk them to safety. Others simply plunged into the crocodile-infested Nile.

A mass grave has been dug by the UN at the St Andrew's Episcopal Church in Bor, where 22 people are buried, including 14 women who were shot dead, or dragged out, raped and had their throats slit.

Meanwhile, food is a major concern.

Standing by his shop that is now just a shell covered in a thin white dusting of flour - the only reminder of the 6,000 stolen bags - businessman Ayuen Guen is worried that people trickling back will have nothing to eat.

"There is no food items, there is nothing." Guen would like to import more food from Uganda, but with banks destroyed and the government in war mode, he cannot change his South Sudanese pounds into dollars to buy anything.

He only knows that he lost an uncle in the fighting and is concerned that he cannot reach his brothers and many friends.

"A lot of people - I'm calling them, and the number is not going through... This place was all just bodies when I came here... In all the town, street children who were in the market - all these people, innocent people - they killed them. Even the mad people."

Monday 24 February 2014

http://allafrica.com/stories/201402242574.html

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Dominican official: Bodies of 3 more Haitians found where boat capsized; death toll at 8


The bodies of three more Haitians have been recovered by authorities in the Dominican Republic, raising the death toll to eight from a capsizing of a smuggler's boat last week.

Local civil defense chief Leoncio Calderon Castillo says searchers found the bodies of two Haitian men washed up on a beach Sunday. Another migrant's body was found in nearby waters where the 25-foot (7-meter) boat capsized.

Last week, a dozen Haitian migrants who took the risky sea journey looking for a better life were rescued by the Dominican navy.

The rescued migrants told authorities the boat departed early Thursday for the U.S. island of Puerto Rico and overturned a few miles (kilometers) from shore. Smugglers had stolen the boat from a tourism business.

Monday 24 February 2014

http://www.local10.com/news/Capsizing-death-toll-rises-to-8-Haitians/24637276

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Families of MIA soldiers hope for excavation at Vietnam war site in Koh Tang


Potential evidence related to Americans still missing after the final battle of the Vietnam War may lead to extensive excavation efforts on an island off the coast of Cambodia, giving renewed hope to the families of the missing.

A seven-member team of investigators from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting command spent a week investigating two sites on Koh Tang island, where the heaviest fighting took place during the May 15, 1975, battle, Stars and Stripes reports.

JPAC officials last month did not provide specifics about the sites or exactly what was found, but were able to provide enough evidence to bring one of the sites before a JPAC body that decides whether to allocate funding for an excavation.

Only solid cases with evidence of Americans' remains are brought before the board, and family members of the missing soldiers say this may be the chance for their loved ones' remains to come home.

Daphne Loney, whose brother Marine Lance Cpl. Ashton Loney was killed in an ambush during the battle, said she hopes it's a possibility his remains will be found.

"My brother was very dear to my heart," she told Stars and Stripes. "I thought no one really cared about Ashton . . . I want his bones to come back to American soil. It was the country he fought for."

While investigating the island in September, the JPAC team inspected a site on its east beach and another on its west beach, said Army Maj. Jamie Dobson. In addition, the officials interviewed witnesses from the battle.

The JPAC excavation decision board will get the information and use it to determine if an excavation is warranted.

But even if the excavation is approved, it may take some time before digging begins. Such sites can stay on the approved list for years, families of the missing have complained, and Dobson did not say when the board would convene to hear the case or start the excavation.

There may not be much time, though. Developers plan to turn the island into a resort, although it's not clear now how the construction plans could affect JPAC's decision.

The battle, referred to as the "Mayaguez Incident," killed 15 service members. Another 23 Air Force personnel died in a support force crash in Thailand, and three Marines were left behind on the island and killed by their captors. The bodies of Loney, Air Force Staff Sgt. Elwood Rumbaugh, who was lost at sea; and the three Marines left behind — Pfc. Gary Hall, Lance Cpl. Joseph Hargrove, and Pvt. Danny Marshall — are the only remains that have not been found.

In 2012, Em Son, the Khmer Rouge commander of the island during the battle, told Stars and Stripes that he discovered Loney's body wrapped in a poncho and left on the beach, and he had him buried nearby.

But there are some who doubt Son, because he was arrested by a Cambodian tribunal looking into Khmer Rouge atrocities.

Son told Stars and Stripes he executed Hargrove and saw him, Hall, Marshall, and Loney be buried. However, Son has not disclosed their potential burial sites, said JPAC, although he insists that he has shown investigators the sites and American remains were found.

There remain questions about JPAC's investigations, as well. Stars and Stripes reported receiving documents that include accusations that JPAC did not fully record their work on the island.

But remains were found on the island during another investigation, held in 2008, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for POW/Missing Personnel Affairs Charles Ray said last month the remains were "probably Caucasian."

Monday 24 February 2014

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Vietnam-Cambodia-MIA-war/2014/02/24/id/554412

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11 Killed in Indonesia Landslides


Two people are still missing after the landslides hit three locations in the provincial capital of Jayapura, according to Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, spokesman for the National Disaster Mitigation Agency, AFP reported.

More than 50 houses have been damaged in the landslides and flooding due to incessant rains that began Saturday night. Rains caused three rivers in the city to overflow.

Monday 24 February 2014

http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13921205000581

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