Two bodies found; believed to be crew of Bangladeshi ship

Two bodies have been retrieved from the Andaman Sea near Krabi province. They are suspected to be members of the missing crew of the Bangladesh-registered MV Hope cargo ship that capsized yesterday.

The Third Naval Area Command said however that as the bodies were not yet able to be identified, it cannot be officially stated that they were members of the missing 11-man crew.

The bodies were taken aboard the HTMS Pattani, an offshore patrol vessel, for autopsy.

Authorities are still searching for the other missing crew by water and by air, but strong waves are an obstacle.

Another meeting of the search and rescue team is being held this evening. The Bangladeshi ambassador and consul to Thailand are scheduled to attend the meeting at the Third Naval Area Command.

Tuesday 9 July 2013

http://www.pattayamail.com/news/two-bodies-found-believed-to-be-crew-of-bangladeshi-ship-28061

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Drowned N. Korean freighter crew members found holding portraits of 'Dear Leaders'

Most of the bodies of dead North Korean sailors who washed up on Japanese shores earlier this year after their freighter sank in the Sea of Japan had portraits of the late North Korean President Kim Il Sung and his son, the late Kim Jong Il, according to a police investigation.

In December, the 6,587-ton freighter, the Taegakbong, sank off the northeastern coast of North Korea. The Russian government picked up the SOS distress signal and offered assistance, which the crew of the Taegakbong rejected.

The 24 crew members of the stricken vessel took to lifeboats, only to go missing. North Korean media has yet to report the sinking.

From February to May, six bodies washed ashore along the coasts of Niigata, Akita and other prefectures. Most had red canteens, which contained the portraits of North Korea's founder and his son wrapped delicately in plastic.

In North Korea, portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il are required in all houses and public spaces. If citizens facing a disaster fail to take portraits with them while making their escape, they face possible severe punishment, including being sent to a concentration camp.

If they protect the portraits at the risk of losing their lives, they are praised by the authorities and lauded with heartwarming stories. The crew members of the Taegakbong apparently took the portraits with them, thinking not only of themselves but also their family members.

Because the bodies have yet to be identified, the police say they cannot return them to their bereaved families.

Local organizations of the pro-Pyongyang General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon) made inquiries to police and other government organizations about the accident. They have not yet offered to serve as mediators between the governments of Japan and North Korea to help identify the victims.

Tuesday 9 July 2013

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201307090055

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Rescuers in Kedarnath run out of supplies, hit by diseases

A team of 74 members of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) has run out of food and medicines in Uttarakhand's Kedarnath after repeated attempts to airdrop supplies for them failed due to inclement weather, officials said Tuesday.

The NDRF team, which is in Kedarnath Valley after the mid-June flash floods and landslides, is left with just one day's ration and some of the members have taken ill in the past one day, official sources said.

The rescue team has not received supplies for the last five days owing to poor weather. Several attempts by the state government to airdrop supplies were aborted Monday as inclement weather and continued rains grounded air traffic, added the sources.

KK Tamta, nodal officer of the health department stationed in Guptakashi, said that doctors with the NDRF team told him about outbreak of diseases. Of the 74 members, at least 40 were suffering from diarrhoea and gastroenteritis (inflammation of the stomach and intestines), he said.

"At Guptakashi, ration and medicines are awaiting to be airdropped to Kedarnath for the past two days," an official said.

"Two special planes full of ration, medicines and other material were not able to fly out Monday owing to poor visibility and bad weather," said Subhash Kumar, chief secretary of the hill state.

The weather can imperil the team's wellbeing, admitted an official, adding that a 15-member team of the army's Sikh Regiment has been sent from Rudraprayag to help the rescuers in Kedarnath Valley.

A team of trained mountaineers will also be dispatched to the valley from the Kalimath-Ukimath side Tuesday.

Officials said that 93 bodies have been cremated so far but lack of wood for funeral and inclement weather has been delaying the cremation of the remaining bodies.

"Several tonnes of wood, ghee and other things required to perform last rites of Hindus were to be airdropped in the Kedar Valley but the operations have been hit by fog and rains," an official involved in the operations said.

Meanwhile, torrential rains have killed at least seven people in other parts of the hill state in the last two days. Apart from this, cloud bursts have flattened over a dozen houses in Chamoli. Four bridges have also been washed away, officials said.

Four people, all labourers, were killed in Dwarikhal area of Pauri Garhwal when they were clearing a road, while three people -- two children and a woman -- died when a wall of a house in Vikas Nagar area of the state capital Dehradun collapsed. The Mandakini river also washed away five shops in Agastyamuni.

The Ganga river is in spate in Haridwar and Rishikesh and many villages are flooded. The Rishikesh district administration has alerted people living on the riverside of an impending flood as the Ganga is flowing well above the "warning mark" of 339 metres and is likely to breach the 339.70 metres danger mark Tuesday.



Authorities have ordered evacuation of people from the Chandrabhaga and Mayakund areas. The Met department has forecast heavy rains in the state Tuesday.

Hundreds were killed and thousands went missing after torrential rains battered Uttarakhand last month.

Tuesday 9 July 2013

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/1858930/report-uttarakhand-floods-rescuers-in-kedarnath-run-out-of-supplies-hit-by-diseases

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For Quebec’s coroner, ‘delicate process’ lies ahead in identifying Lac-Mégantic’s dead

Faced with the grim but essential task of identifying victims of the Lac-Mégantic tragedy, Quebec’s chief coroner foresees a “long, delicate process” of shipping remains in refrigerated trucks to labs in Montreal.

Louise Nolet said on Radio-Canada that she’s expecting to match fragments of remains and use DNA testing extensively because many of the bodies may have been burned beyond recognition.

In some homes that were consumed by fire, she said, an additional challenge will be distinguishing the remains of humans and those of household pets.



“This is the beginning of a long, delicate process that requires expertise,” Dr. Nolet said in an interview with The Globe and Mail.

That point was reinforced at a news conference on Monday, when the coroner’s spokeswoman, Geneviève Guilbault, implored relatives of suspected victims to provide their loved ones’ toothbrushes, combs and razors to be used to match DNA.

Ms. Guilbault said three dental technicians and a forensic anthropologist, who specializes in identifying remains in advanced stages of decomposition, would be assisting the coroner’s office.

An estimated 50 people went missing in the fire that consumed a wide swath of the downtown core, including a popular bar, the Musi-Café, where it is believed many of those who vanished were early Saturday morning when the blaze began.

The building was at the centre of the derailment and was incinerated, raising the spectre that some victims may not be identified if they were cremated in the inferno.

Provincial police Sergeant Benoît Richard said Monday that 13 bodies had been recovered from the ruins thus far, although he was unclear how many of them have been identified.

The process of identification could take weeks, months or even years.

“It’s going to take some time, especially with remains that have been badly burned,” said Mark Desire, who oversees a team of four scientists in New York City that continues to identify remains of people killed in the 2001 World Trade Center attack.

Last week, the team identified a firefighter, making him the 1,637th person identified among the more than 2,600 people who died that day.

Over the dozen years, the team has fine-tuned its identification process, including using liquid nitrogen to grind bone to a fine powder to expose more cells that can be extracted for testing.

“You do whatever it takes,” Mr. Desire said. “The goal is to identify these folks and return them to their loved ones.”

The fire at Lac-Mégantic razed 30 buildings and some witnesses described feeling its heat kilometres away.

Thambirajah Balachandra, the chief medical examiner of Manitoba, said the key to investigations like that under way in Quebec is meticulousness.

“Don’t assume everything is burned. You always have to think that there will be something, some evidence,” Dr. Balachandra said.

He later added: “It’s very painstaking.”

Tuesday 9 July 2013

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/for-quebecs-coroner-delicate-process-lies-ahead-in-identifying-lac-megantics-dead/article13084637/

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Namungoona fuel tank inferno DNA results out

Wails filled Mulago mortuary as the Police revealed the identities of eight bodies that were burnt beyond recognition in a fuel tanker inferno in Namungoona a fortnight ago.

“We have successfully gone through this process without a lot of challenges. Six out of the eight bodies matched the rightful tests we did.

"The other two remaining bodies are going to be kept in the mortuary until we get the persons whose DNA results match the bodies,” Dr. Moses Byaruhanga, the Police surgeon, said at the health facility on Monday.

Byaruhanga said they delayed to announce the results because by the time the incident happened, the DNA analytical machine was due for service.

The Kampala Metropolitan Police chief, Andrew Felix Kaweesi, who addressed some of the bereaved, assured the mourners that the tests had been carried out professionally and transparently to make sure there are no fights over bodies.

“Some people are claiming that their relatives were burnt beyond recognition, but that is a lie, bodies were just deformed. We managed to get everyone,”he said.

Meanwhile, doctors are overwhelmed by different people who are still showing up at the hospital claiming to be relatives of the deceased even after the results are out.

Though the DNA test for Patrick Sserukuma, who passed away last week, matches that of his biological mother, Harriet Nakawungu, a one Justine Nalugwa, who claims to be the late Sserukuma’s sister, wants to find out why her blood test could not match with her dead brother’s.

“I am his biological sister and want to take his body for burial. I will follow up other things later.

I have never seen that woman who is claiming for his body. She just wants money,” said Nalugwa.

As doctors, Police and mortuary attendants looked on, Nalugwa slapped Sserunkuma’s mother, saying she is not the real mother. Nakawungu who stayed calm, said she did know Nalugwa.

Sserunkuma’s body was eventually handed over to the biological mother, leaving Nalugwa in tears and cursing everyone.

Tuesday 9 July 2013

http://www.newvision.co.ug/news/644831-namungoona-fuel-tank-inferno-dna-results-out.html

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High summer heat raising death toll among undocumented immigrants in Arizona

An average of five to six undocumented immigrants are turning up dead in the desert every week amid even-hotter-than-normal summer temperatures in Arizona, authorities and human rights groups say.

According to figures compiled by the U.S. Border Patrol, June was a tragic month for immigrants who decided to illegally enter the United States via the Arizona desert, with more than 27 deaths, the majority "caused by the high temperatures and dehydration."

"This year what we've seen with the Border Patrol are many more 911 calls from immigrants who've gotten lost in the desert. This has helped us find these people before they died," Andres Adame, the spokesman for the Border Patrol in Arizona, told Efe.

"This year we already have 494 rescues, compared to 414 last year," but the Pima County medical examiner's office is keeping the bodies of more than 100 unidentified immigrants in cold storage.

Meanwhile, Arizona's Coalicion de Derechos Humanos (Human Rights Coalition), which works with the ME's office, said that it is receiving an average of three reports of missing migrants each day.

"Today we have five cases where I have to return the calls and I don't know how many more have come in in the last few minutes. Yesterday, I received three. I'm a little backed up with four or five cases, if I check my mail perhaps there are two more," the coalition's Kat Rodriguez told Efe.

"We had a case two weeks ago of a Colombian, the family called us from New Jersey and gave us information about where he had last been seen. We're in contact with the Border Patrol rescue team; in this case the information was very precise and the body could be located," Rodriguez said.

"It had to do with a 51-year-old odontologist, the mother and daughter came to look for him and regrettably they had to go to the morgue to identify him. It was a very sad situation," she said

Tuesday 9 January 2013

http://www.aaj.tv/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/12-killed-over-35-injured-in-accident-near-Dadu.jpg

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Bus accident near Dadu kills 13, injures 35

An accident involving a passenger bus on the Indus Highway near Dadu claimed 13 lives and left 35 others injured, some critically.

The incident happened late on Sunday night in the Bok Mori area, some eight kilometers of Dadu as a speeding coach, that was carrying passengers from Qambar Shahdadkot to Karachi, overturned after its tyre-rod broke.

The deceased include four children, two women and seven men, all hailing from the Qambar Shahdadkot district. Their bodies were immediately shifted to their hometown early in the morning.

The rescue efforts were marred by a lack of ambulances and more than half of the injured had to be taken to the hospital in police mobiles.

Two of the injured, Irfan Soomro and Waqar Soomro, died in a small emergency ward of the civil hospital Dadu, where load shedding and suffocation added to the miseries of the patients.

According to District Health Officer (DHO) Dadu Roshan Bhatti, ten amongst the injured are still in a critical condition and some of them have been shifted to Jamshoro and Hyderabad.

Abdul Jabbar, one of the injured persons at the hospital, said that some passengers had asked the driver, who also died in the accident, to slow down but he did not respond.

The Station House Office (SHO) Khudabad police station said that the bus, bearing registration number LES-6637, has been completely destroyed. A case of the incident is likely to be registered against the owner of the bus for an unfit transport vehicle.

Tuesday 9 July 2013

http://tribune.com.pk/story/574062/bus-accident-near-dadu-kills-13-injures-35/

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Eight more bodies found, many still missing in Lac-Mégantic

Eight more bodies have been found in Lac-Mégantic, Que., bringing the official body count up to 13 people after a runaway train carrying crude oil set off a series of explosions and flattened the town's busy downtown.

Police said some 50 people are missing — a figure that includes the 13 unidentified bodies that have been recovered since the train derailed at about 1 a.m. ET Saturday.

The bodies will be transported to Montreal for forensic analysis and identification, he said.

Police are asking family members to provide toothbrushes, combs, or other items that might provide DNA from their missing relatives to help investigators identify the bodies.

About 2,000 of the town's 6,000 residents were forced to leave their homes on Saturday, but 1,500 of those evacuees may be able to return home as soon as Tuesday.

While some residents prepare to move home, the community has a long road ahead as it faces rebuilding the downtown core that was levelled in the series of blasts.

The Saturday blasts destroyed about 30 buildings, including a public library and Musi-Cafe, a popular bar that was filled with revelers, and forced about a third of the town's 6,000 residents from their homes.

Much of the area where the bar once stood was burned to the ground. Burned-out car frames dotted the landscape.

Sgt. Benoit Richard, from the Quebec Provincial Police, said a number of areas which had previously been off-limits to firefighters and police because of safety concerns are now accessible.

As a result, police and fire crews will now broaden their search for victims, he said.

The locations that will now be searched include Le Musi-Café, which was busy with patrons at the time of the blast.

He added that the area is still being considered a crime scene, and investigators will be thorough in their probe.

“We have 12 crime scene investigators along with major crime unit are on the scene, so we have a lot of space that is being checked on by all the officers over there,” he told CTV News.

Tuesday 9 July 2013

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2013/07/08/lac-megantic-quebec-train-explosion.html

http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/13-dead-dozens-still-missing-in-lac-megantic-1.1357612

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