Saturday 13 September 2014

Thirty killed in truck crash in Central African Republic


At least 30 people were killed when an truck carrying oil and laden with passengers plunged into a ravine in Central African Republic, a local official said on Saturday.

The accident took place near the town of Boali, some 95 km (60 miles) northwest of the capital Bangui, on the main road to the Cameroonian border. The highway is used to transport food and supplies to the Central African capital.

"The vehicle was transporting cans of oil and there were a lot of people travelling on top," Mathurine Gbadin, deputy prefect of Boali, told. "It wanted to overtake another vehicle and plunged into a ravine."

Gbadin said at least 30 people were killed and dozens more injured had been transported to Bangui by African Union peacekeepers.

Saturday 13 September 2014

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/09/13/uk-centralafrica-crash-idUKKBN0H80FF20140913

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At least 63 rescued after passenger ferry sinks off the Eastern Philippines, 21 missing


A ferry with at least 84 passengers and crew onboard sank on Saturday off the coast of central Philippines after a mechanical problem, and authorities said they were searching for at least 21 passengers who were still missing.

Three ships, including a foreign-registered liquefied petroleum gas carrier, rushed to the area where the ferry sank near the coast of Southern Leyte province.

An estimated 84 people — 58 passengers and 26 crew members — were on board the Maharlika II when it sank off the coastal province of Southern Leyte, Coast Guard spokesman Lieutenant Armand Balilo said.

“Rescuers are having difficulty in the area because of huge waves and strong winds,” the provincial governor, Roger Mercado, told a Manila radio station.

Mercado said 13 passengers were rescued by a sister ferry of the Maharlika and another 50 by a foreign vessel. Balilo said the Coast Guard has dispatched additional rescue teams to the area. The ferry was on its way to Surigao City from Liloan town in Southern Leyte, a trip of about three hours.

Mercado said the ferry sent a distress signal after its rudder broke, stalling the vessel while it was being battered by the waves and winds.

The accident took place as typhoon Kalmaegi, packing maximum winds of 120 kilometres per hour and gusts of up to 150 kph, barrelled towards the northern Philippines from the country’s east coast. Balilo said there was no storm signal warning over Southern Leyte or Surigao when the accident happened.

Nonoy Caseres, a brother of a passenger, said he last spoke with his sibling at 6 pm (1000 GMT).

“He was crying,” Caseres told DZMM radio station.

He added that his brother told him: “We’ve been ordered to abandon ship. There is no rescue coming.”

Before the phone call, Caseres said his brother, who was travelling with his wife, sent him an SMS saying, “God be with us.”

Southern Leyte Governor Roger Mercado told authorities were verifying eyewitness reports that around 100 people boarded the ferry, more than the 84 people listed on the ship's manifest.

Sea travel is a key mode of transportation in the Philippines, an archipelago of more than 7,000 islands. But accidents are common because of poor safety standards and overloading. The country was the site of the world’s worst peacetime maritime disaster when a ferry collided with an oil tanker days before Christmas in 1987, killing more than 4,300 people.

Saturday 13 September 2014

http://www.gulf-times.com/asean-philippines/188/details/408089/at-least-63-rescued-after-passenger-ferry-sinks

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9 migrants rescued, 20 feared dead off Malta


Maltese and Italian vessels are searching for more than 20 migrants feared dead after a boat carrying them sunk 300 miles south east of Malta.

The operation started Friday after a merchant ship rescued two migrants who said a total of 30 had been on board.

The Italian Coast Guard rescued another seven migrants. The survivors, including two children, have been taken to Greece, the nearest landfall and within helicopter range.

The alert was raised yesterday afternoon by the cargo ship Pegasus which spotted and recovered two persons who were in the water. They reported they had been in a boat carrying 30 migrants which had sunk.

The ship informed Malta rescue coordination centre which immediately started coordinating a search involving several cargo ships, three Italian coast guard vessels, three Italian aircraft and one Maltese aircraft.

An Italian coastguard aircraft spotted a group of survivors in the water and dropped a life raft to assist them. Seven persons, including two children, were eventually picked up merchant ships in the area. They are conveying them to Greece, which has the nearest harbour. Some of them needed urgent medical assistance and were ferried to hospital by a Greek helicopter.

One of the corpses picked up by a cargo ship is being brought to Malta today.

The search will continue this morning.

A number of corpses were also found. One of the corpses is to be brought to Malta by a cargo ship later today.

The numbers of migrants fleeing conflicts and risking the perilous sea voyages from Libya to Europe has swelled this year. Some 110,000 people have been rescued since January, and the U.N. refugee agency says at least 1,889 others have died.

Saturday 13 September 2014

http://www.wbtw.com/story/26523089/9-migrants-rescued-others-feared-dead-off-malta

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140913/local/afm-coordinates-search-after-migrants-boat-sinks-several-survivors-and-corpses-found.535444

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Searching for El Salvador's disappeared


Inside their tiny home in a poor neighbourhood of San Salvador, Ana Elizondo and her husband hold religious celebrations for their friends and neighbours, singing and praying several times a week.

It's a chance for them to find comfort through their faith. Outside Elizondo's front door, street gangs run the neighbourhood, and maintain their grip through fear and violence as they do in many other communities throughout this country. "My children are running a risk every day but I can't lock them up. They must confront the life we are living every day. And that is, you go out and may never return".

That is what happened to her son over three years ago, when 14-year-old Josue went out and never came back. "Someone was going to introduce him to a girl," Elizondo says about the day her son left.

She began her frantic search that night and hasn't stopped since, despite threats from gang members. She and her family believe the meeting with a girl was a trap set by the gangs, and that Josue was killed because he refused to join their ranks. He has yet to be found.

Standing in front of a map dotted by the secret graves he has discovered throughout El Salvador, Israel Ticas tells Al Jazeera, "This is their modus operandi." According to Ticas, who works as a forensic archaeologist and criminologist for the main prosecutor's office, the violent gangs' strategy is a simple one: "If there is no body, there is no crime."

From every wall of his office, faces of the dead look out. The graphic images consist of people disappeared by gangs, most of them dismembered, and all of them hidden until Ticas and his team finds them. He has exhumed thousands of bodies at over 800 grave sites.

A collection of soil samples from different sites sits on one shelf in Ticas' office. In a jar, a small, dismembered hand of a young woman is almost perfectly preserved; her nails are still painted red. Ticas tells Al Jazeera that 75 percent of the gangs' victims are women. "A woman in my country is more vulnerable," he says. "First, because of the culture. A woman is a sexual symbol, an object, and the degree of barbarity used to kill a man is often not as extreme as that used to kill a woman."

On his Facebook page, under the name "el abogado de los muertos", or "the lawyer for the dead", he posts pictures of clothing, possessions and any clues he discovers to help families identify their dead. Many come to the sites where he digs. "They tell me please find at least some of my child's bones so I can die in peace."

Others phone him and urge him to search in specific places, but he says he cannot unless they have made a criminal complaint and the case is under investigation, which many families won't do. "People say nothing," he says. "People are afraid."

In this tiny nation of just over six million, assistance in helping families search for their loved ones has not been a priority due to fear of reprisals. According to police figures given to Al Jazeera, crime related violence has claimed the lives of an estimated 21,394 people since 2009, and the majority were victims of gang related violence.

Police also say at least 2,166 people have gone missing since the beginning of 2013. But with so many graves still to be discovered, and not all families reporting a missing relative, those numbers are likely to be much higher.

"In reality it's very difficult to give a concrete number," El Salvador's Human Rights Ombudsman David Morales says. He is critical of the lack of support for suffering families, and adds that "for decades the state has not made victims a priority".

"In El Salvador, historically, victims have been discriminated against; the victims of armed conflict, of political violence after the civil war and victims of violent crime," he adds.

'Tortured and dismembered'

As a result, families and mothers in particular have now become the primary point people in searching for the missing. They go from hospitals, to the police and prosecutor's offices, and to the morgue, photos in hand, to plead for information.

At San Salvador's morgue, Maria Eugenia Ayala is looking for her son, who has been missing since January. Another parent, Jorge Alberto Perez, says he and his wife have looked everywhere for their daughter. "We are looking for her, whether she's alive or dead. And if she's dead, I want the authorities to turn her over to us," he tells Al Jazeera,

Inside the morgue, at least 80 boxes are stacked in two small rooms, each containing the bones of a person. Oscar Armando Quijano, who manages the morgue, says identifying the remains is a challenge. "We can see they are tortured and dismembered, so we can only find body parts. By doing this, the criminals are sending the message of what they are capable of doing."

In a cell at the back of a local police station, 18th street gang member Alfonso tells Al Jazeera that he can't comment on the disappeared. "These are things that only we know. I can't explain it to you. It's a rule of the gang," he says. For the second time in two years, the 18th street gang and its rival, Mara Salvatrucha, agreed to a truce on August 31. But their pledge to stop the killings didn't include an offer to help find the dead.

"Before the [last] truce we had 12, 13 murders a day nationally, and then it dropped to five," says Howard Cotto, the deputy police chief. He also adds that when the murders started to drop, the cases of disappeared persons began to rise.

Meanwhile, on a bus ride to her local prosecutor's office, a journey she makes every two weeks, Ana Elizondo has little hope investigators will bring her news of Josue's whereabouts. "The authorities tell me to be patient, nothing more," she tells Al Jazeera, as her meeting once again yields no results.

"Each time they tell me to bring them some new information, but I don't know anything."

Saturday 13 September 2014

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/09/searching-el-salvador-disappeared-persons-gang-violence-201491212519331225.html

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Landslide devours hamlet in Udhampur, 31 still missing


Ganesh Singh walked 30 km to reach his village only to find it missing, as a mountain had crumbled after heavy rain devouring the entire hamlet and with it 41 people, including his family of six.

Recalling the sequence of events, Ganesh said on September 7, he got a call from his brother whose last words were that they were in danger due to cracks in their house.

"I got a call around 11.45 AM from my brother. He said the house had developed cracks and was sinking," Ganesh said.

"Three to four minutes later, I called him back to ask him to leave immediately with everyone, but the phone wasn't ringing," he said.

Ganesh, who was in Jammu, trekked 30 kms from the last road point to reach the spot. He was shocked to see that the village was nowhere.

Instead, a mountain of boulders and mud stood at its place. Only his father survived the landslide.

Same was the plight of several others.

Labourer Yash Pal's family of six was buried alive beneath the rubble.

Nine-member family of Sunku Ram was also wiped out and rescuers are finding it difficult to remove the rubble manually.

"My entire family came under this tomb," Yash Pal, shattered by the tragic death of his family members, said.

The landslide on September 7, triggered by torrential rain, wiped out the entire Punjar Saddal village. At least 41 villagers were buried alive.

Rescuers have so far recovered ten bodies while 31 bodies are to be traced. They are presumed dead.

Unlike Ganesh, Sunku Ram, Yash Pal and several other villagers Panch Kartar was lucky. He escaped the natural calamity by a whisker.

Kartar said, "In less than a minute, all was finished. Mountain came cracking down before my eyes. There was no sign that Punjar-Saddal ever existed."

"There was heavy rain and we were about to leave. Few stones were rolling intermittently. Suddenly there was a bursting and mountain came crumbling in less than a minute," Kartar said. He and his five member family narrowly escaped the landslide.

As the information poured in, DIG, Gareeb Dass led by a team of NDRF, Police, Army besides a medical team, reached the spot.

But after the initial successes of recovery of seven bodies on September 8, there was no breakthrough till this morning, when three bodies were recovered along with a limb.

As the operation advances, all that have come out are rubble, parts of a child's slate with illegible scrawls, piece of a door frame, clothes discoloured by mud, shoes and a few body parts-- portion of a hand or toes.

"It is a very difficult operation to trace the bodies and dug them out despite a massive rescue operation being launched for the last five days," Udhampur-Reasi Range DIG Gareeb Dass said.

"The rescuers are battling a several metres high mountain of boulders, rocks and mud. Now we have decided to urge the Centre to send some equipment to trace the bodies so that drilling can take place in that area to dug out the bodies," he said.

Roads and Buildings Department Chief Engineer Abdul Hamid, who was tasked to set up a track so that bulldozers and cranes reach the spot, has been able to partially connect the area.

"We have been able to almost connect the area by a track to facilitate speedy operation," Hamid said.

Over 100 more families, which were rescued from the area, have been accommodated in several government buildings.

IAF is flowing relief materials including food, water, biscuits, blankets and medicines.

Kapoor Singh, who lost six members of his family in the landslide, is waiting helplessly.

"As the rescue operation begins each day for the past five days, I keep coming with a hope that today I will get bodies of my family members. But I return disappointed to camp in the evening," he said.

Like him, Girdhari Lal too weeps over the loss of five family members.

Local MLA and Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party (JKNPP) president Balwant Mankotia blames the district administration for the incident.

"Villagers requested District Magistrate Udhampur for their evacuation in view of heavy rains and cracks in their houses. But she did little as she was away from her district," Mankotia said.

Colonel Nitin Tiwari, the Commanding Officer, whose unit and his men were trying to remove a boulder as high as three stories, said it was a difficult operation.

Armymen were wearing masks because the stench made it difficult to work.

Saturday 13 September 2014

http://www.outlookindia.com/news/article/Landslide-Devours-Hamlet-in-Udhampur-31-Still-Missing/859659

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