Dana air crash: Victims’ families plan burial rites

Notwithstanding on-going DNA tests being conducted on victims of Sunday June 3rd Dana plane crash, some families of the deceased have decided to go ahead with burial rites for their loved ones with...

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Anxious relatives are trying to contact Australian authorities

TEENAGE boys desperate to escape persecution in Afghanistan and Pakistan probably made up most of the 90-plus asylum-seekers who drowned off Christmas Island last week, it emerged yesterday, as police moved to identify at least three of the 17 bodies recovered. Anxious relatives overseas are trying to contact Australian authorities for information on whether their loved ones are alive. Afghan man Raiz Hussain told The Australian from his home in the United Arab Emirates he feared his brother Asad, 25, was on the boat and might be dead. Mr Hussain said his brother had been in Indonesia for 18 months and wanted to get on a boat to Australia; he had been unable to contact him since the disaster. "Sometimes he was calling me from Indonesia and told us he wanted to go to Australia, and now his phone is switched off. I'm worried he was on this ship," he said. "When the boat was destroyed, his phone was switched off." The most influential...

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Putco crash - 11 bus victims identified

At least 11 of the 19 people, who died in the Putco horror smash on Monday, have been identified. Relatives of the deceased yesterday identified some of the bodies that were being kept at the Diepkloof...

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Uganda abandons landslide rescue bid for buried

Rescue workers in Uganda have abandoned efforts to find an estimated 70 people believed to be buried in a landslide. Eighteen people have been confirmed dead after three villages were swept away on the slopes of Mount Elgon. Uganda's Red Cross told the BBC efforts were now concentrating on looking after the injured and displaced. In March 2010, thousands were forced to flee after after a landslide killed more than 350 people in Uganda's eastern Bududa district. 'Many cracks' Ken Kiggundu, director of disaster management for Uganda's Red Cross, told the BBC that 72 people were still missing. He added that 480 had been displaced and were now living with relatives and friends following Monday's landslide, which occurred after a number of days of heavy rain. "At 2pm, the ground trembled, followed by heavy rumbling of soil and stones which covered our home," Rachael Namwono, a villager in Bududa district, told Uganda's private Monitor...

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