Friday 18 July 2014

Three dead, 100 rescued as migrant boat sinks off Libya


Libya's navy said it retrieved the bodies of three would-be migrants and rescued almost 100 others after their boat sank Thursday.

“One of the migrants called us on a satellite telephone to tell us that their boat was about to sink off Garabulli,” east of Tripoli, navy official Issa Zarruk told AFP.

“We have saved more than 90 migrants. Three have died probably from suffocating in the panic that ensued on board the boat.”

The Libyan navy was seen taking the survivors ashore in dinghies.

Thousands of Africans seeking asylum or a better life in Europe have died in recent years trying to make the journey from Libya across the Mediterranean Sea.

Warmer weather prompts a surge in migrants each year, and thousands of people have landed on Italian shores, where processing centres are already saturated, notably in Sicily.

Friday 18 July 2014

http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/news/world-news/171267-three-dead-100-rescued-as-migrant-boat-sinks-off-libya

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MH17: recovering the victims

A guidebook on Bali and a children's card game lie amid the debris of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 as emergency workers pick through the grisly carnage of the vast crash site, recovering victim after victim.

Painstakingly, fire fighters make their way through the wreckage, stopping here and there to plant sticks tied with white rags to identify the location of some of the 298 victims.

"Anatoly, come over here. There are a lot more in this field," a fireman shouts to his colleague as a light rain falls.

A day after the passenger jet was apparently shot down by a missile in rebel-held eastern Ukraine, dozens of fire trucks from surrounding towns were at the scene.

But with the debris scattered for kilometres, under-equipped emergency crews were clearly overwhelmed by the scale of the tragedy.

Hours after the disaster, an AFP crew at the site saw dozens of severely mutilated corpses still lying at the crash site after eyewitnesses reported seeing the plane disintegrate in mid-air.

An arm could be seen poking from under a seat lying in a ditch. Nearby, luggage was piled up on a slope.

Two engines, a piece of a landing gear and chunks of the fuselage dotted with windows were strewn about as melted metal solidified in pools.

The sound of dogs barking could be heard in the distance. Separatist fighters at the site said they will shoot any animals that come to scavenge there.

Kiev has blamed the rebels and their alleged Russian backers for downing the plane. But the separatist deny the claim and have vowed to protect the scene and allow investigators access to the crash site.

The rebels have also suggested that they are willing to agree to a temporary truce to facilitate the recovery but the sound of faraway explosions can still be heard sporadically.

Along a country road, a mini-bus has been converted into a crisis unit with 18 miners from a nearby pit serving as volunteers.

"Of course it's scary but we can't leave them like that," says Ivan, 54, a miner of 28 years, referring to the victims.

In the background the noise of a volley of Grad multiple rocket launcher is heard.

"Hear that, there they are again bombing the peaceful population," he says.

There are no crowds of curious onlookers at the scene and the inhabitants of a nearby hamlet remain indoors trying to make sense of the carnage that they've witnessed.

"You understand, it was as if a three-storey building came down but missed us," Pavel, 45, a farmer told AFP as he looked at some of the fuselage lying a hundred metres from his house.

"I'm in shock and will never forget it. We really almost died. It smells like death." Another crew of emergency workers walks past carrying a fresh bundle of sticks to use as markers.

One of them lets slip it is unlikely that all of the victims can be recovered.

"We realise that we'll never find all of them in an area of 25 square kilometres," he says.

Friday 18 July 2014

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/grim-trawl-for-bodies-at/1271158.html

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MH17 air crash: Battle for control of disaster inquiry


The investigation into the MH17 air disaster is fraught with difficulties.

The crash site is in territory controlled by pro-Russian separatists. Jurisdiction and control over what emerges as the full account of what happened will be contested fiercely. Even beyond the human tragedy, the stakes could scarcely be higher, with the future direction of the Ukraine crisis seemingly in the balance.

As global anger and shock mounts over the apparent shooting down of the passenger aircraft, here are some of the key issues surrounding what could be a highly contentious air crash investigation. line

Who has jurisdiction?

"Responsibility for an investigation belongs to the state in which the accident or incident occurred," according to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a UN body.

However, almost any major air crash inquiry will be an international affair that draws in other nations due to their technical expertise, resources or - as in this case - the political ramifications of the disaster.

When Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 went missing in March, Malaysia headed the inquiry but invited numerous other countries to participate. In the latest disaster, nations with passengers aboard the doomed jet will likely want to play a role, or launch their own inquiries.

A number of Western nations have already called for a full, independent, international investigation into what happened.

Meanwhile, the Russia-led Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) - the official aviation authority in Russia which counts former Soviet states, including Ukraine, as signatories to its treaty - says any inquiry should be set up under the auspices of the ICAO.

How do you investigate in a conflict zone?

The safety of anyone involved in the investigation will be paramount, as will unfettered access to the site, the security of the debris field - including the flight recorders, and access to anyone who might have seen the crash or be able to shed light on what happened.

Pro-Russian rebels say they will allow international investigators to access the crash site via some kind of humanitarian corridor, but there are international calls for a complete cessation of hostilities to allow a rapid independent investigation.

There are also already concerns over the whereabouts of the flight's "black box" recorders. Reports say rebels already have at least some of the aircraft's data recorders in their possession and that they have promised to give them to the Moscow-based IAC.

The uncontrolled removal of items from the debris field could have serious implications for the integrity of the air crash investigation, experts say.

Don't we already know what happened?


The US intelligence authorities say their monitoring systems suggest a surface-to-air missile brought down the plane, but it was not yet clear who fired it. The two sides in Ukraine's civil conflict have accused each other of shooting down the jet.

On recordings said to be of intercepted phone calls between a separatist fighter and a Russian military intelligence officer - sourced to the Ukraine's main security agency, the SBU - the two men apparently discuss the shooting down of a civilian plane in the minutes after MH17 crashed.

But the calls are unverified. And rebels insist their equipment is not capable of bringing down an aircraft at more than 30,000 feet - and that Ukrainian troops must be responsible.

Intelligence agencies will be "crawling all over" the calls and other information from the crash site, Michael Clarke of the Royal United Services Institute told the BBC.

"With what is known in the West together with these things they will probably get to the bottom of it very quickly" but there will likely always be room for doubts, the expert said.

What will investigators focus on?

Former US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chairman Deborah Hersman said the "road map" for investigators in the first day or two would be finding all "four corners of the aircraft" - the nose, the tail and the two wing tips - as well as the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder.

Investigators would be looking to "sequence" the break up of the plane - find out where it started and how it spread, Ms Hersman told US network NBC.

The flight data recorder will reveal the exact time of the incident and the altitude and exact position of the aircraft, while the cockpit voice recorder will reveal what the crew knew was happening before disaster struck.

Russian experts quoted by the Kommersant newspaper (in Russian), have been detailing what the wreckage of an plane hit by different missiles should look like.

"If this was a Buk, we should expect to see holes in the fuselage, wings etc. But if it was an air-to-air missile, then we should expect elongated 'cuts' along the body of the plane, as opposed to 'holes'." Why are the stakes so high?

Correspondents say that if it does turn out that the Boeing 777 was shot down by the separatists - with weaponry supplied by Moscow - then it could significantly alter the terms of the whole debate surrounding the Ukraine crisis.

The disaster comes at a time of already soaring tensions.

This week the Ukrainian authorities accused Russia of downing a Ukrainian military plane on a mission over the east of the country on Wednesday, killing two of the eight crew members on board.

Russia called the accusation - the first direct claim of a Russian attack on Ukrainian forces - "absurd".

Meanwhile there has been serious fallout from fresh US and EU sanctions against Russia. Moscow has condemned them as "blackmail" and warned of retaliatory action against Washington.

Friday 18 July 2014

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-28363394

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The 'crying women' at Mexico's mass graves


Tres Valles is so small that deaths in the town are announced by a loudspeaker mounted onto a car roof.

Benita Fuentes was the latest member of this tight-knit community to have passed away, so an official from the town hall drives around the potholed streets playing a recorded message giving the time and place of her wake.

An elderly woman, Ms Fuentes slipped away in the night from natural causes. But the spectre of death, of violent death, lingers over Tres Valles at present.

The sleepy town was catapulted into the news in Mexico last month after at least 31 bodies were discovered buried at a ranch just walking distance from its picturesque main square.

There are local rumours that another 10 bodies were found that were not officially declared.

Those deaths did not receive the same dignified recognition by the town hall as Benita Fuentes's.

Rather it was the vultures circling overhead that alerted people to the bodies.

The graves were found at a ranch called El Diamante, a nondescript patch of countryside in the eastern state of Veracruz.

The area is green, lush and thick with jungle. Twitchy policemen inside a patrol car guard the blue gate, preventing anyone except forensic investigators from entering the site.

Photos published online, however, suggest that what lies just beyond the brow of the hill is as disturbing a scene as has ever been uncovered in Veracruz.

The remains of men, women and at least one child were found, many of them dismembered and decapitated.

'Crying woman'

Tres Valles was the latest of 246 graves discovered in Mexico over the past three years, according to official figures.

In her wooden shack on the outskirts of the town, Alberta Diaz, known as Dona Berta, is slowly recovering from the emotional turmoil of burying five members of her family - her daughter, Rosalia, and four of her grandchildren.

Ms Diaz recalls the shock of finding out they were missing.

"They took them on a Friday, but I didn't realise until the following morning," the grief-stricken 61-year-old explains in a barely audible voice.

"Five days later, the newspaper said some bodies had been found and published her [Rosalia's] name and her nickname, Bailarina [dancer]."

Rosalia, along with four of her children - the youngest just 15 years old - had been killed and buried in the mass grave at El Diamante.

After the bodies were exhumed, the state security secretary in Veracruz said the victims in the grave "weren't decent people", implying they had links to one or other of the two drug cartels battling for superiority in this region of Mexico - the Zetas and their rivals the Gulf Cartel.

Though it pains her to admit it, Dona Berta is prepared to accept that her daughter was involved in organised crime. But she insists her grandchildren did nothing to deserve such a brutal end.

"It made me very sad to read their death certificates. My daughter's said: 'Stab wounds and slit throat'. I couldn't sleep last night after reading them, each one the same: dismembered, dismembered, dismembered," she sighs.

"If my daughter had done something wrong or owed a debt, her children shouldn't have had to pay for it."

Macabre pilgrimage

The nearest big town to Tres Valles is Tierrablanca. There, living in the same abject poverty as Dona Berta, is Elvira Gomez, another mother who travelled to El Diamante that day looking for her children.

Elvira has spent eight months on a macabre pilgrimage, visiting mass graves and morgues in the search for her sons, Rodrigo and Juan.

"There is a myth in Mexico about the crying woman, La Llorona (who walks the earth suffering for her lost child)," Elvira says choking back the tears.

"Well, it's not a myth, it's true. I'm one."

Unlike Dona Berta, however, she does not accept that her sons, aged 18 and 21, were involved with the drug cartels.

She is adamant they were picked up one day by the local police.



She says they have not been seen since. "I don't know why they took them. We're working people, peaceful people. I don't know what the problem is." Wrong circles

The interior minister recently stated that there were only 8,000 missing people in Mexico.

After accusations that the figure was a gross underestimation, the government revised it upwards to 16,000. But many human rights organisations say the real figure simply is not known.

What is clear, though, is that the problem affects families at both ends of the social spectrum.

Juan Rene Chiunti is a deputy for the governing PRI party in the Veracruz state parliament. His brother has been missing, feared dead, for 15 months.

Yet he insists the vast majority of people who vanish or end up in graves like Tres Valles moved in the wrong circles, often with the implicit knowledge of their families.

"Today those same family members cry: 'Oh, my poor son, where is he?'" he says.

Well, the first question I'd ask those families is: 'What did your son work in or study? Let's start there.' When you can answer that question satisfactorily, then we can see whether or not he was a good person."

"But if he was on the wrong path, we have a saying around here: he who walks badly, ends badly."

As we leave Tres Valles, we are told that another mass grave has been found nearby, this time with eight bodies inside.

Elvira Gomez, and other desperate mothers like her, were doubtless already on their way there, to see if they too can start to grieve.

Friday 18 July 2014

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-28247468?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

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Malaysia Airlines Plane Crashes in Ukraine, 295 On Board


A plane belonging to Malaysian Airlines has gone down over eastern Ukraine, near the Russian border.

Malaysia Airlines has tweeted that it lost contact with flight MH17 from Amsterdam, and that the last known position of the plane was in Ukrainian airspace. The plane was travelling towards Kuala Lumpur.

Flightradar24, the flight tracking service, said the Boeing 777 was flying close to the city of Poltava in Ukraine flying at 33,000ft, or 10,000 metres when contact was lost.

An emergency services rescue worker at the scene told how at least 100 bodies have been found at the site so far, and that debris from the wreckage is spread across an area up to about 15km in diameter.

There were 298 people, including 154 Dutch nationals, on board the Malaysia Airlines flight that crashed in strife-torn eastern Ukraine, the carrier said on Friday.

The flight “was carrying a total number of 298 people — comprising 283 passengers including three infants of various nationalities and 15 crew of Malaysian nationality,” the airline said in an emailed statement.

There also were 43 Malaysians, including the crew and two infants, and 27 Australians, it said, updating earlier figures as the airline worked to verify passenger nationalities.

Twelve were Indonesians including an infant, nine were British, four were German, three were from the Philippines and one was Canadian.

The airline said four were Belgian but the Belgian foreign minister said five Belgians were on board.

Malaysia Airlines said the nationalities of 41 passengers remained unconfirmed.

Air traffic control lost contact with the Boeing 777-200 around 14:15 (12:15 GMT) near the Russian-Ukrainian border, Malaysia Airlines has said.

The flight took off from Schiphol airport in Amsterdam shortly after noon Thursday and was supposed to land in Kuala Lumpur at around 6:10 a.m. Friday local time.

Malaysia Airlines will send a team to Ukraine on Friday to help with the investigation.

Another plane will also be made available to grieving relatives wanting to visit the crash site, an official said.

The crash is the Netherlands’ second-largest air disaster to date.



The country’s largest happened in March 1977 when 238 Dutch citizens died at Tenerife in the Canary Islands when two Boeing 747s crashed with the loss of 582 lives.

The crash is a fresh blow to the flag carrier which, along with the Malaysian government, is still struggling to provide answers on the disappearance of flight MH370 on March 8 with 239 people aboard.

Malaysia Airlines will send a team to Ukraine on Friday to help with the investigation.

Another airplane will also be made available to grieving relatives wanting to visit the crash site, Gorter said.

Questioned about the cause of the plane crash, Gorter said: "At this stage we are still looking at it from the viewpoint of being an accident." Earlier, shocked and crying relatives were shielded from the press as they arrived at Schiphol to be taken to a special gathering area.

They were later escorted from the airport and taken by bus to an undetermined destination, Dutch news agency ANP reported.

The crash is the Netherlands' second-largest air disaster to date.

The country's largest disaster happened in March 1977 when 238 Dutch citizens died in Tenerife when two Boeing 747s crashed with the loss of 582 lives.

Malaysia Airlines says it will release the full list of the names of those who perished on board flight MH17 once all next of kin are notified.

The firm earlier revealed that it has diverted all of its European flights onto alternative routes following the downing of Flight MH17 yesterday.

The number of Britons killed in the Malaysia Airlines crash in eastern Ukraine has reportedly risen to nine. Including the 15 crew members, this brings the total death toll in the disaster to 298.

Among the dead were a number of people travelling to an international conference on Aids, being held in Melbourne, Australia.

Flight MH17 was said by eyewitnesses to have "exploded" after it was reportedly shot down by a ground-to-air missile.

In a statement released this morning, Malaysia Airlines said: "With immediate effect, all European flights operated by Malaysia Airlines will be taking alternative routes avoiding the usual route.

"Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which was on a scheduled flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur went down in eastern Ukraine. Malaysia Airlines confirms that the aircraft did not make a distress call.

"The usual flight route was earlier declared safe by the International Civil Aviation Organisation. International Air Transportation Association has stated that the airspace the aircraft was traversing was not subject to restrictions.

Friday 18 July 2014

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/621093/298-on-board-crashed-malaysian-flight-airline

http://www.straitstimes.com/news/asia/south-east-asia/story/malaysia-airlines-mh17-crash-298-people-board-flight-154-dutch-says-

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/malaysia-airlines-crash-firm-says-3877168

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Three months later, body recovered from South Korea ferry


Divers retrieved another body Friday from the site of South Korea's ferry disaster -- the first to be recovered in nearly four weeks from the submerged vessel that sank three months ago.

The body of a female was found inside a dining hall of the upturned ferry which is lying on the seabed at a depth of 40 metres (130 feet), rescue authorities said.

The 6,825-tonne Sewol ferry was carrying 476 passengers and crew -- including 325 high school students -- when it capsized and sank off the southern coast on April 16.

The latest body brings the number of confirmed dead to 294, with 10 victims still unaccounted for.

Although more than three months have now elapsed since the disaster, dive teams continue to carry out dangerous daily missions to scour the inside of the vessel for the missing bodies.

Victims' families insist that heavy cranes can only be brought in to lift the ship once all the victims have been accounted for.

President Park Geun-Hye and her administration have been bitterly criticised for their response to the disaster, which stunned the entire country.

A recent report by the state auditor said the sinking was a "man-made disaster" created by negligence, corruption and greed.

Fifteen Sewol crew members are on trial, including the captain and three senior officers who are accused of "homicide through wilful negligence" -- a charge that can carry the death penalty.

The bulk of the charges arise from the fact that they chose to abandon the ferry while hundreds of people were still trapped inside.

More than 30 student survivors marched on parliament this week to press demands by victims' relatives for parliament to pass a special bill setting up an independent inquiry.

The bill has been stuck in the National Assembly because of disputes between ruling and opposition lawmakers over the legal powers any inquiry panel should be given.

Friday 18 July 2014

http://news.yahoo.com/three-months-later-body-recovered-south-korea-ferry-031953006.html

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