As time runs out in morgues, the living line up

KARACHI: Four days after the fire at a garment factory in Baldia Town – men, women and children stood outside hospitals and the Edhi morgue, waiting for their turns to give their DNA samples to help identify their loved ones.

According to Abbasi Shaheed Hospital’s spokesperson Dr Saleem Raza, a total of 42 DNA samples were collected, including two on Friday. At Civil Hospital, Karachi, the doctors collected 17 DNA samples, while the staff at Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre received 12 DNA samples. Civil hospital’s spokesperson Dr Kamaluddin Shaikh told The Express Tribune that the hospitals were asked to send all blood samples to the police who will then send them for testing. He added that they might call a team of experts to Karachi to hurry up with the DNA assessment.

However, Dr Suresh Kumar, the special secretary of health at the Sindh Health Department, said that all DNA samples were being sent to Islamabad. He added that around 99 bodies and 65 DNA samples had already been sent to the country’s capital. Although the process of matching and sampling DNA takes about 15 days, Kumar claimed that the government was trying to speed things up.

As the stench of burnt flesh haunted the Edhi morgue, the workers looked concerned with how long the unidentified 41 bodies would remain there. They said that it was not advisable to leave them there for so long. An Edhi representative, who has been looking after the bodies and handing them over to families since Tuesday, said that they usually did not keep bodies at the morgue for more than three days. “We can store the bodies here for three or four more days,” he said. “It will be difficult to do so after that. The government really needs to hurry up with the identification process.”

He added that besides giving their DNA sample to identify their loved ones, many families also came to the morgue to find their loved ones and recognised them by their clothes or items that belonged to them. He did not have a count of how many bodies had been handed over to the families.

According to a man who works at the morgue, when families came to collect the body from the morgue it created a lot of confusion since there was no official or proper way to record it.

“We are keeping the relatives Computerised National Identity Cards with us as record,” he said. “We cannot control this or stop people from taking the bodies with them. There is no way to double check anything.” A total of 218 bodies were taken to the Edhi morgue in Sohrab Goth. It has the capacity to store around 600.

Dr Kumar said that the bodies will be kept at the morgue for the six to ten days it will take the government to match DNA samples. In an effort to speed up the process, the government has placed advertisements in newspapers asking for help

Saturday 15 September 2012

http://tribune.com.pk/story/436898/as-time-runs-out-in-morgues-the-living-line-up/

Afghan: Bus collision with truck leaves 51 dead

Kabul: A fiery crash between a bus and a truck in Afghanistan on Friday morning claimed 51 lives.

According to General Zarawar Zahid, the police chief in Ghazni province, both the vehicles burned after the collision in Ab Band district.

He says 51 of the 56 passengers on the bus have died. Afghan police and soldiers are working to remove the victims, including children, from the wreckage.

Zahid says many of the bodies are so badly burned that they cannot be easily identified. The fate of the two drivers was not immediately known.

Saturday 15 September 2012

http://zeenews.india.com/news/south-asia/afghan-bus-collision-with-truck-leaves-51-dead_799585.html

Log Blamed for Fatal Sinking of Kalimantan Ferry

At least 18 passengers on a fully-loaded ferry that sunk on East Kalimantan’s Mahakam River were missing and feared dead on Friday evening, police said, with a collision with a log on the river the suspected cause of the capsizing.

“There are in total three deaths. ... The number missing is 18,” said Sukarja, the head of the Mahakam Ulu port in Samarinda, the provincial capital.

The KM Surya Indah had 98 people on board when it capsized at the stretch of the river near Seblang village late on Thursday. One body and 76 survivors were rescued, district police chief of detectives Adj. Comr. Suparno said.

Sukarja said police, soldiers and residents were searching the river for survivors or bodies, using divers, speedboats and rubber boats.

Suparno said rescuers were continuing to search for the missing.

“We are still focused on finding the victims and we are looking in the location around the site of the accident,” Suparno said.

He added that the skipper and other crew members were among the survivors.

The KM Surya Indah regularly plies the route between Samarinda and towns in the regency of West Kutai along the Mahakam River. It was reported to have sunk at 11 p.m. on Thursday.

Sukarja said the ship had been bound for Melak, West Kutai, 350 kilometers inland from Samarinda.

“The ship was made in 2001 and is really seaworthy. According to the boat manifest, the passengers only numbered 40 and there were 10 tons of goods,” he said.

Boats usually take on board more passengers along the way. Sukarja said there were three other unofficial ports that the boat had stopped at to take on passengers and goods.

The ferry had the capacity to transport 96 passengers and 40 tons of cargo. It left the Mahakam Ulu terminal in Samarinda at 7 p.m. on Thursday and was scheduled to arrive at Melak on Friday at 1 a.m.

Sukarja said he was only informed of the capsize on Friday morning. He said he was informed that the boat had sunk four hours after leaving for Melak.

He said that the preliminary suspicion was that the boat had hit a log floating adrift on the Mahakam. “This is still a preliminary estimate, that the ship was hit by a large log, a collision strong enough to capsize the ship,” he said.

Overcapacity has been blamed for other boat capsizing incidents across the country. Last month, nine are suspected to have died after a boat carrying 325 tons of basic staples sank off the coast of Aceh.

The boat, KM Artika, which carried nine crew members including the captain, only had capacity to carry materials weighing 200 tons.

A bridge collapse on the Mahakam last year caused dozens of deaths.

Saturday 15 September 2012

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/log-blamed-for-fatal-sinking-of-kalimantan-ferry/544498

10 soldiers killed, 50 missing, as South Sudanese military boat sinks: army

At least 10 soldiers were killed and another 50 were reported missing after friendly fire caused a South Sudanese military boat to sink on the Nile river, the army said Saturday.

“It was an accident. The boat was travelling at night and passed before a (control) post at Lul, which tried to stop the boat. When it did not stop they fired at the boat and it sank,” army spokesman Philip Aguer told AFP, adding that there were about 170 soldiers on board.

“Ten bodies were retrieved from the water... there are about 50 still missing,” he said, adding that 112 survivors were picked up following the accident on Wednesday.

South Sudan gained independence in July 2011 after decades of civil war.

Transforming its former guerrilla movement into a fully functioning government and proper army is one of the new nation’s biggest challenges as is reining in militia groups.

In what analysts describe as a “proxy war” between the two former civil war partners, South Sudan claims that rebel militia groups are funded by Khartoum, while Sudan says that rebels in two of its rump states that formerly fought alongside the South still receive its support.

The two countries are currently in African Union-led talks in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa to try and find a deal on border security.

Saturday 15 September 2012

http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/09/15/238199.html