Sunday 23 March 2014

Another deadly road accident in Egypt kills 17


Seventeen workers were killed Sunday after their company vehicle crashed in an accident on the Cairo-Alexandria Desert Road near Beheira governorate.

At least two injured and were sent to a nearby hospital, according to Al-Ahram Arabic news website.

The dead were transferred to Gharb Al-Nobara Hospital morgue.

No further details were given on the circumstances of the accident.

Egypt is notorious for its poor road safety. According to the World Health Organisation, 12,000 Egyptians are killed in accidents annually.

Only two weeks ago, 25 people, including three children, died in a road accident in the Sinai Peninsula when a passenger bus collided with a parked truck carrying 50 tons of building materials.

Sunday 23 March 2014

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/97348/Egypt/Politics-/Another-deadly-road-accident-in-Egypt-kills-.aspx

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Maharashtra tanker blast toll rises to 10


The toll in Saturday’s petrol tanker blast went up to 10 with two more people dying due to their injuries, officials said here Sunday.

According to investigating officer D.K. Palwankar of Kasa police station, near Dahanu town, the process of identifying the victims is underway and three men have been identified so far.

The DNA tests will be conducted to ascertain the identity of other victims before the bodies are handed over to their relatives, he said.

Among the dead are at least two women, while 24 injured people have been shifted to hospitals in Mumbai and Thane, Palwankar said.

The tanker was carrying around 35 tonnes of petrol when the driver lost control over it Saturday afternoon on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad national highway.

The tanker skidded, overturned, caught fire and exploded on the highway near Charoti village around 2.30 p.m.

Police officer Preeti Patil of Kasa police station said the burning, speeding tanker skidded down the highway, knocking down around 10 other vehicles in its path.

One restaurant and some small shops in the vicinity were damaged as leapt out from the tanker.

An hotel Apsara where the tanker went and halted was badly damaged due to the flames.

Teams of firefighters and police rushed to the site for rescue operations as massive traffic snarls blocked both sides of the highway near the Charoti toll post. One side of the highway could be cleared for traffic only by 6 p.m.

Eight injured people were admitted to hospitals.

The bodies and the injured have been taken to the Kasa Primary health centre. Doctors at the centre said that though the dead were identified by their relatives, the bodies may have to be sent for DNA analysis as they are badly charred.

An hotel Apsara where the tanker went and halted was badly damaged due to the flames.

The premises of the Hotel Apsara suffered up to 70 per cent damage due to the fire as the flames from the vehicles parked near the hotel swept up its walls.

The flames from the explosion also damaged a jeep, three Tata Magic taxi vans, three autorickshaws and 10 motorcycles.

Some of the clients who were trapped in the hotel due to the fire were later rescued by the fire personnel. “As it was lunch time, there were many truck drivers and passengers inside the hotel,” said Jadhav.

“Until the fire is completely extinguished, we would not be able to ascertain the number of people stuck inside the burning vehicles, but as of now, seven persons have been confirmed dead,” said an official.

Sunday 23 March 2014

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Seven-burned-alive-as-oil-tanker-explodes-on-Mumbai-Ahmedabad-national-highway/articleshow/32499712.cms

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70 years later, U.S. soldier killed in Normandy returns home

U.S. Army Private First Class Lawrence S. Gordon — killed in Normandy in 1944, then mistakenly buried as a German soldier — will soon be going home to his family.

But don’t thank the American military for this belated return. The Pentagon declined to act on his case, despite exhaustive research by civilian investigators that pointed to the location of his remains.

Instead, Gordon’s family and advocates used the same evidence to persuade French and German officials to exhume Gordon and identify him through DNA testing. That’s right: the relatives of this U.S. soldier, who fought against the Germans, are relying on Germany to bring him back home.

Gordon’s case is another example of breakdowns in the American system for finding and identifying tens of thousands of missing service members from past conflicts. More than 9,400 troops are buried as “unknowns” in American cemeteries around the world. Yet, as ProPublica and NPR recently reported, the Joint Prisoners of War/Missing in Action Accounting Command (J-PAC) rarely disinters any of those men to try to use DNA to identify them. On average, just 4 percent of such cases move forward.

A Pentagon review ordered by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel of how the military is managing its mission to find and identify MIAs concludes next month.

Gordon’s family benefited from a fluke of circumstance: Gordon was in a German cemetery in France, not an American one, allowing his case to advance without the U.S. military’s participation.

Jed Henry, a filmmaker from Wisconsin whose grandfather served in Gordon’s unit, took up Gordon’s case in 2011. Henry scoured records, witness statements and various archives and pieced together evidence about Gordon’s whereabouts.

Gordon’s family knew only that he was killed in Normandy when a German shell hit his armored car in August 1944. Gordon’s bloody wallet was sent home to his mother in Canada. (Gordon had Canadian citizenship, but he was born to American parents and decided to enlist in the U.S. Army.)

Henry found paperwork revealing the Army had recovered the destroyed vehicle and two badly burned, unidentifiable bodies. They were buried as American unknowns.

After the war ended, the Army dug up both sets of remains, finding they wore German clothing. Using fingerprints, one was identified as U.S. Army Pvt. James Bowman, who had been in the turret of the car next to Gordon.

It was impossible to use fingerprints to identify the other set of remains. The bones were given a number, X-356, for lack of a name. Because of the German clothing, they were turned over to the Germans, who interred them in a crypt in France.

That evidence was enough to persuade the French and German governments to exhume the remains last fall and test for DNA, but not the Pentagon.

“Why is that we had enough evidence to convince the French and the Germans but not the Americans?” Henry asked. “Why is the burden of proof in America so much higher? It’s ludicrous.”

The April 2013 internal J-PAC memo argued that the evidence was too thin to eliminate the thousands of other men who died in the area during that time, concluding “that the association between [Gordon] and this set of remains was possible but improbable.” J-PAC historian Jeffery Johnson questioned whether it was even within the agency’s authority or responsibility to try to identify Gordon because he was a Canadian citizen.

Another J-PAC official told Henry in an email that the case didn’t meet the criteria for disinterment set by Pentagon policy. In practice, J-PAC’s scientific director, Tom Holland, has broad leeway to interpret that criteria and he has set an extraordinarily high standard that has led to the 96 percent rejection rate. J-PAC did only one World War II disinterment in 2013 and none in 2012.

So the critical tests on the remains were performed by France’s National Forensic Science Institute, which found that DNA from a molar matched that of Gordon’s nephews, according to a letter from the French prosecutor overseeing the matter.

Dirk H. Backen, the Brigadier General of the German Defense Attaché, sent a personal letter to Gordon’s namesake and nephew, Lawrence R. Gordon, after learning of the test results, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

“Eventually, justice has won. My congratulations for showing such honorable commitment, patriotism, faith and courage to walk that long path for your uncle,” Backen wrote. “He will come home and that is what counts. He fell in a battle against my countrymen, but he did this under a just cause: To liberate Europe from fascism and to restore peace, freedom and humanity. His sacrifice was not in vain.” There will be a ceremony on June 10 in France to turn Gordon’s remains over to his family. For the flight across the Atlantic, representatives of the Canadian, German and French military will escort Gordon, Henry said. It’s unclear if the American military will be there, he added.

The remains will go next to the University of Wisconsin for an anthropologist and odontologist to inspect. The lab there will also test the DNA to confirm the French results. The family has invited J-PAC to observe the process but has opted not to give the remains to the agency to examine independently.

The family won’t wait on the U.S. government to proceed with burying Gordon in Saskatchewan on Aug. 13, the 70th anniversary of his death, Henry said.

The Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office said in a statement that “we strongly believe that Pfc. Gordon will receive full military benefits and honors suitable to the honorable service and sacrifice that he made for all of our Countries during the Second World War.”

Gordon’s family and advocates are frustrated the U.S. military is just now stepping up to be involved.

J-PAC’s “mission statement says to achieve the fullest possible accounting of soldiers,” Henry said. “They’re never going to get everybody, but they can certainly do a hell of a lot better than what they’re doing.”

Sunday 23 March 2014

http://www.salon.com/2014/03/22/70_years_later_u_s_soldier_killed_in_normandy_is_finally_coming_home_partner/

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Final rites: ‘Mothers can’t even recognise their children’


The death toll has risen to 42 people when two passenger buses carrying smuggled petrol and diesel on their rooftops caught fire after a fierce collision with a truck on the RCD Highway near Gadani Morr in Lasbela district of Balochistan on Saturday.

Police and rescuers had confirmed 37 deaths in the tragic accident and inferno till the filing of this report.

The collision and resulting fire was so fierce that one of the buses and the truck were completely burnt and the passengers did not get a chance to escape the fire and were burnt alive before the rescuers arrived.

Police officials from Hub, Coast Guards personnel, Frontier Corps officials as well as volunteers of the Edhi Foundation and a couple of fire tenders reached the spot and took part in rescue activities and the shifting of bodies and injured to hospitals in Karachi.

Officials said most of the deaths occurred due to the hydraulic doors and sealed windows of the air-conditioned buses. When the buses caught fire after the collision their doors were jammed and people could not escape from the windows due to the presence of iron bars.

There were reports of some six to seven Pakistan Navy personnel among the dead in the accident who were returning to their bases in Karachi from Balochistan but Navy officials neither confirmed nor denied such reports.

A spokesman for the Pakistan Navy said an investigation was under way to find out if Navy personnel were also on board the buses but added that the actual situation could only be ascertained after DNA tests. He said samples were being taken for DNA tests as almost all the bodies were completely charred and were not identifiable.

The Edhi Foundation said they received 37 bodies, of which 36 were shifted to the mortuary as they were charred beyond recognition while the body of the driver of the ill-fated truck, who was identified as Nasir Ali, was handed over to his family.

Anwar Kazmi, spokesman for the Edhi Foundation, said the truck driver was burnt alive on the driving seat of the truck after the accident and he was identified due to his body’s presence in the truck, but the 36 bodies taken out of the buses were completely charred and it was even difficult to distinguish between male and female bodies.

“Three to four bodies were of children who can be identified due to their size and height, otherwise they were unrecognisable,” he added.

Forensic scientists collected the DNA samples of the charred bodies and sent them to Islamabad for identification as it was the only solution left to identify the ill-fated passengers who perished in the accident.

“Mothers cannot even recognise their children,” says Riasat Ali, a clerk at the Edhi Morgue in Sohrab Goth, Karachi. “Today’s incident reminds me of the 2012 Baldia Town factory fire in which everyone was burnt to death as well,” he recalls, as he sweeps away ashes on the floor.

Scores of burnt bodies – and body parts – lie wrapped in white cotton shrouds, tucked away on stretchers of the morgue.

The stench of burnt flesh pervades the hall which was crammed with 37 charred bodies of passengers of the ill-fated bus that collided with a truck early Saturday. Outside the hall, some relatives of the victims cling to their cell phones, while some carry photographs of their loved ones to help in the identification.

“I took these [pictures] from their houses, but I think these are useless now,” says Salman, as he chokes. He has come to the Edhi mortuary to identify his friends, Zafar and Khalid. “I came here to take their bodies to their parents so that they can bury them.”

Shakir, who lives in Lyari, Karachi, is also waiting outside the mortuary. “Akhtar and Tanveer were in the bus and since the accident, their phones are not responding,” he says about his friends who were coming from Balochistan in the bus. “But all bodies are burnt. They decompose if you touch them,” he exclaims. “I could not even differentiate between a man and a woman. God save us from such days.”

“We have identified the drivers of the two trucks – only because their bodies were found in the driving seats,” says Ahmed Edhi, the assistant in-charge of Edhi Karachi Zone. One of the bodies has been handed over to the heirs, he adds. Thirty-six bodies remain in the mortuary but they can only be identified after DNA tests.

Edhi spokesperson Anwar Kazmi says that male and female recognition is not possible but they know that five bodies are of children.

The Sindh Health Department has set up an information desk at the Edhi Cold Storage for the collections of samples for DNA identification.

Sunday 23 March 2014

http://tribune.com.pk/story/686194/final-rites-mothers-cant-even-recognise-their-children/

http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-13-29262-42-die-as-accident-causes-inferno-on-RCD-Highway

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Nigeria: Scores of human skulls found in Ibadan


Residents of Oyo State capital on Saturday evening received with shock the discovery of an underground dungeon where hundreds of human skulls were found.

Most of the people who besieged the site, in Soka area in Oluyole local government area of the state, wept when a search party went to the underground located in the state's capital and uncovered several corpses of persons killed inside the dungeon.

As at the time of filing this report, many of such skulls were still being discovered. Apart from hundreds of skulls, human body parts, including decomposed ones, disused clothes, shoes, pictures and voter cards were found at the scene.

It was gathered that the search party was combing the area for nine missing people while 16 people were rescued from the site.

It was gathered that about 20 decomposed bodies were discovered, including about 18 males and five females, looking skinny with chains on their legs.

One of the women was said to have been delivered of a baby early yesterday, but the infant was sold. The woman was brought out of the bush; she had stains of blood on her.

When asked to explain how she got to the place, she uttered a few words and fainted. About nine of them were lying on the ground, very weak and unable to speak.

There were human skulls, bones and other parts found in the bush.

It was a forest of death as there were also open graves where bodies were dumped.

It was gathered that the bush was where human parts were freely sold to people who often came to the area at night.

A source informed that some Fulani herdsmen were usually seen in the bush with their cattle.

One Akeem Isiaka (38) was arrested at the scene and taken away by security agents to Sanyo police station .

Inside the bush were the bodies dumped in some open containers and some deep dry wells where their captors dropped them.

In one of the buildings, an abandoned factory where the captives were slaughtered and sold in parts to clients was found.

There were clots of blood on the floor of the room and a platform built by wooden plank. Some mechanics around the area confirmed that many high-profile people usually visited the area especially in the night to patronise their clients.

When contacted , the Oyo State police command spokesperson, Mrs Olabisi Clet-Ilobanafor, said some arrests were made yesterday, but the prime suspect was at large. She, however, declined to mention the number of people arrested.

The police spokesperson said some security personnel have been detailed to the scene to prevent the people from taking the remains.

Every year, hundreds of Nigerians lose their lives to ritual killings.

Their body parts are sold for large sums of money to people who believe they will become more powerful through magical potions containing human flesh and blood.

Sunday 23 March 2014

http://allafrica.com/stories/201403230024.html

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Update: At least 19 dead, 32 missing in Uganda Lake Albert boat capsize


At least 19 people were dead and 32 others missing in a boat accident off Lake Albert in Western Uganda on Saturday, according to reports quoting local security officials. Lake Albert lies along the Uganda-Congo border, and is about 100 miles long and 20 miles wide. Ugandan police officials said among the bodies recovered in the accident, 16 were children.

Reports say there were over 96 people on board the vessel with most of them being refugees from Democratic Republic of Congo at the Kyangwali Refugee Settlement located in Hoima District South West Uganda.

The cause of the accident is believed to have been overloading as the ill-fated vessel was transporting people from Kyenjonjo to Hoima. Some reports say the captain of the boat has survived and has since been arrested.

The refugees were reported to be on their way to Democratic Republic of Congo from Kyangwali and Bugoma in Hoima district.

Authorities said at least 45 passengers were rescued with 32 others still missing even as search and rescue operations continued with a police marine unit and fire brigade scouring the area.

Sunday 23 March 2014

http://www.rttnews.com/2290312/at-least-19-dead-32-missing-in-uganda-lake-albert-boat-capsize.aspx?type=gn&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=sitemap

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