10 children dead in school bus accident in India

At least 10 children died in an accident Tuesday morning in Rajasthan and another 20 are in hospital after their school bus collided with a truck on a national highway in the district of Ganganagar which borders Punjab, Indian media reported.

The children, students of a private school, were between the ages of seven and 17.

Their bus driver was allegedly trying to overtake another vehicle when he collided with a truck coming towards him.

Eight children died immediately; two died after being moved to hospital, said officials.

The drivers of the school bus and the truck involved in the accident are both missing.

Angry villagers in the area held a protest demanding action against the school, which ignored Supreme Court rules, and did not place a teacher on board the bus.

Parents also say that because two other buses for the school were not running this morning, there were nearly 50 children on the bus that had the accident.

Tuesday 30 July 2013

http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/international/30-Jul-2013/10-children-dead-in-school-bus-accident-in-india

17 killed in Pakistan bus accident

At least 17 people have been burned to death in northwest Pakistan when a gas cylinder exploded on a bus after it collided with a truck.

The bus was carrying passengers to the city of Bannu when the collision happened on a highway around 140km from Peshawar, the capital of the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

"The gas cylinder installed in the bus leaked after the accident and it caught fire," said Dil Nawaz Khan, a senior government official in Karak city, where the accident happened.

"All 18 people on board were burnt and only one passenger could survive. His position is also critical."

Hospital officials said six women and children were also among the dead.

"We received 17 dead bodies including the bodies of three children and as many women. Most of the dead bodies are badly mutilated and could not be identified," Sarfraz Khan, a doctor at Karak's public hospital, told AFP.

One of the witnesses, who was coming to Karak from Peshawar, said when they reached Tor Dhand area they saw both the vehicles on fire while the truck driver and cleaner were running towards bushes.

“No one dared to go near the inferno,” he said, adding that they called the fire brigade which reached the spot after 90 minutes. “Till then the fire had gone out and the bodies had been taken to hospital,” he said.

Medical Superintendent Dr Dil Faraz Khan said 17 bodies along with an injured person were brought to the hospital, where he declared an emergency. He said he later transferred the injured man to Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar due to his critical condition after administering first aid.

“All the bodies are charred and disfigured beyond recognition,” he added. However they found two CNICs on the bodies which revealed that the passengers were from Bannu.

The doctor said the bodies covered in shrouds were lying in the hospital. “We have performed postmortems, which reveal that most of the passengers were killed due to blazing fire, which erupted after the explosion of CNG cylinder,” he added.

An official of city police, Shafiq Khattak, said he rushed to the spot along with other police officials after the accident. He explained that due to difficulty in identifying the bodies they were contacting vehicle stands in Bannu, DI Khan, Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Peshawar to identify the vehicle owners and then reach the relatives. “So far we haven’t filed the case as we are trying to identify the bodies,” he added.

Pakistan has one of the world's worst records for fatal traffic accidents, blamed on poor roads, badly maintained vehicles and reckless driving.

Tuesday 30 July 2013

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/killed-in-pakistan-bus-accident/story-fn3dxix6-1226688449183

http://tribune.com.pk/story/584403/deadly-collision-17-die-in-karak-road-accident/

Italian bus crash: mass funeral for the 39 victims of the Italian bus disaster

Thousands of mourners packed into a sports hall today for a mass funeral to commemorate the 39 victims who died in the Italian coach disaster.

Prime Minister Enrico Letta joined an estimated 4,000 relatives, friends and dignitaries after calling a day of national mourning to mark one of the worst road accidents in the country's history.

Sobbing relatives clutched flower-draped coffins or collapsed into the arms of their loved ones ahead of the service this morning in Pozzuoli, a town in southern Italy which lost 28 members in the crash. A close-knit group of about 50 friends and relatives were on board the bus when the driver lost control on a flyover and smashed into a line of cars before falling 100ft into a ravine.

Italian prosecutors have launched an investigation into possible manslaughter over yesterday's accident, the worst such crash in western Europe in the last decade.

Hearses lined up outside a school in southern Italy as sobbing relatives watched them take away the coffins of those killed.

A local priest held a mass outside the school in Monteforte Irpino, where the bodies of 35 victims had been laid out in the gymnasium. Three more victims were being held in a local hospital.

"They told me to look at all the bodies until I found my brother," said one man, who only gave his name as Ciro.

"It was like a mountain had fallen on my head," he said of the search for his 40-year-old sibling.

One father had to be pulled way, moaning and clutching his son's coffin as it was carried to waiting hearses to be taken to Pozzuoli, the town the victims were from, for funerals on Tuesday.

President Giorgio Napolitano described the crash as "an unacceptable tragedy" and called for improved road safety standards.


Prosecutors have launched a potential manslaughter investigation over the accident, which occurred on a busy highway between the southern cities of Naples and Bari.

The ANSA news agency said the probe would look into the possible role of the driver, as well as the state of the bus and the crash barrier on the highway.

ANSA said the driver's body would be examined for the possible presence of alcohol or drugs, while traffic police have seized the vehicle documents from coach operator Mondotravel.

Mr Letta declared a day of mourning for Tuesday.

"This tragedy has profoundly moved our country... it is an open wound," Mr Letta said while on a visit to Athens.

"I am grieving for and express my profound sorrow to the families of the victims".

The 48 people on board the coach were returning from a pilgrimage to Pietrelcina in the Campania region, the birthplace of Padre Pio, an Italian priest canonised in 2002 and worshipped in the country's south.

The bus rammed several cars before it crashed through a barrier and down a slope, about 50 kilometres from Naples in an area described as an accident black spot.

Police said 38 people had died, including the driver, although transport minister Maurizio Lupi had put the number of dead at 39.

Rescue workers pulled 33 bodies from the wreckage and found three more thrown from the vehicle as it plunged down the slope.

Another two died in hospital of their injuries.

Ten passengers were injured, along with another nine people in cars hit by the bus before it left the road.

Photographers at the scene said about a dozen wrecked cars were strewn across the motorway, which was closed to traffic.

One survivor, quoted by his uncle who met him in hospital, reported hearing a tyre exploding and that the driver had been unable to control the vehicle.

Rescuers have cleared the last of the wreckage from a wooded area off the highway, where a row of beige seats had lain along with passengers' belongings, including a child's teddy bear.

Earlier on Monday, officials had called out the names of each family from a list and the relatives put white masks over their mouths to go into a makeshift morgue in the gym.

"The relatives are in a terrible state. Each one has had to go in and look over the bodies to identify the ones they know. Several have been on the point of collapse," Calabria Red Cross unit chief Stefania Pisciotta said.

The bus crash was the deadliest in western Europe in the last decade and the worst in Europe since an October 2010 accident in Ukraine, when 45 people died.

The last major bus accident in Europe was in Switzerland in March last year, when a coach carrying Belgian schoolchildren home from a skiing holiday crashed, killing 28 people, including 22 children.

The latest accident came just days after a train derailed in Spain, killing 79 people, the deadliest rail disaster in the country in decades.

Tuesday 30 July 2013

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-30/prosecutors-launch-probe-into-possible-manslaughter-over-italia/4852038

8 Killed, 5 Missing in Floods in East Indonesia

Rescuers have found eight dead bodies and are searching for five others reported missing as floods hit Ambon, capital of Maluku Province in eastern Indonesia, local official said on Tuesday.

The disaster seriously damaged over 50 houses and submerged hundreds of buildings in the city that pushed over 4,000 people fleeing from homes said Brory Tjokro, head of disaster management and mitigation agency for Ambon.

The heavy rains that swept the city since Monday were blamed for the disaster that caused over-flowing of rivers, he said.

"We have found eight dead bodies, two of them died after being swept by currents and the rest were hit by the rubble of their houses after landslides destroyed them," Tjokro told Xinhua over phone from the city.

"Now the rescuers are digging the soil, where the houses were leveled by landslides, to find those went missing," he said.

The local administration is providing foods, tents and others emergency needs for the evacuees who are taking shelters in tents, school buildings and other buildings.

On July 25, a dam broke in Maluku Province, leaving three people missing, seriously damaging 470 houses and forcing more than 5,000 people fleeing from homes.

Tuesday 30 July 2013

http://english.cri.cn/6966/2013/07/30/3441s778791.htm

Four refugees found dead after sea search in Greece

The bodies of four drowned refugees were found last Friday on a beach on the holiday island of Kos, Greece, after a boat carrying immigrants illegally into the country from nearby Turkey was reported to have sunk.

Victims, including a pregnant woman and a teenage girl, are believed to be Syrians.

The shipping ministry said the bodies were discovered near the northern tip of the Aegean island, and also included another woman and one man.

A coastguard search was launched Thursday after a man who said he was Syrian told authorities he had survived the boat sinking but that 12 other people were on board.

The search came a day after the drowning of another man who was trying to enter Greece in a small boat crammed with refugees.

A coastguard statement said the victim was found unconscious in waters off the eastern Aegean Sea islet of Oinousses early on Thursday, and died shortly later.

Greece is the busiest crossing point for what is described as illegal immigration in the European Union.

Tuesday 30 July 2013

http://neoskosmos.com/news/en/Four-refugees-foun-dead-after-sea-search-in-Greece

Iran death boat victims slipped past Jakarta visa crackdown

Iranian asylum-seekers involved in last week's West Java boat tragedy spent only one night in Jakarta, flying in on visas-on-arrival before being transported to the fatal boat, investigators say.

An Iranian party -- 64 people, all from Abadan in the country's southwest, a survivor told The Australian -- arrived on a single flight in Jakarta, apparently last Sunday.

They spent one night in the capital, in a South Jakarta apartment block, before being moved to Bogor and then to the coast, West Java police spokesman Martinus Sitompul said yesterday.

Responding to Australian pressure, Indonesian Justice Minister Amir Syamsuddin recently signed an order cancelling the visas-on-arrival facility for Iranian nationals. The order comes into effect on August 20.

The death toll from last Tuesday's sinking rose to 20 yesterday with a further five bodies found.

It now appears there were at least 209 passengers aboard the vessel, about 120 Sri Lankans and most of the rest Iranians.

The Sri Lankans were lodging in the Bogor area, about 60km south of the capital, for about a month before the operation, according to the initial police investigation.

Police have arrested four Indonesians who allegedly were involved in transporting the asylum-seekers from Bogor to the West Java coast, near Cidaun, and organising small boats to ferry them out to the fishing vessel which sank about 12 hours later.

Police are now searching for the owner of the fishing boat and a South Asian man who co-ordinated the two groups of asylum-seekers.

Lieutenant-Colonel Martinus said yesterday investigators had not gathered enough information to identify the agents responsible for the Sri Lankan and Iranian groups, or whoever put together the smuggling operation.

Sri Lankan survivors told The Australian last week their agent was an expatriate countryman now living in the Bogor area named Pathmanathan Nirubakaran.

The Sri Lankan survivors have told Indonesian police and immigration officials they had not heard of the new Australian policy denying settlement to anyone arriving by boat.

The Iranians from Abadan had heard reports of the policy in the short time following their arrival but were told by their agent in Jakarta that the reports were unfounded rumours. "All of them were saying the same things," a senior police officer in the investigation said yesterday.

The four Indonesians now in custody have been provisionally charged under Article 120 of the Immigration Law, and face jail penalties of five to 15 years.

Tuesday 30 July 2013

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/election-2013/iran-death-boat-victims-slipped-past-jakarta-visa-crackdown/story-fn9qr68y-1226687777424

No bodies found, but more victims identified in Lac-Mégantic

After taking two days off, workers in Lac-Mégantic’s Red Zone continued to search on Monday for the remains of the last five victims believed to be buried in the rubble.

Unfortunately, said Sûreté du Québec spokesperson Aurélie Gaendon, no new victims had been found by 7 p.m., so the total number of victims found remained at 42. The SQ said it still believes 47 people were killed when a train pulling 72 tankers of crude oil derailed and exploded in the small Estrie town on July 6.

So far, 34 victims have been identified by the Quebec coroner’s office, which released three additional names Monday morning.

Coroner spokesperson Geneviève Guilbault said the victims had been identified Friday, but the website was only updated after the weekend. It is protocol to give grieving family and friends at least 24-hours’ notice before the names are announced to the public, she said.

The newly-identified on the coroner’s list include 28-year-old Eric Pépin-Lajeunesse, 30-year-old Talitha Coumi Begnoche and 45-year-old Stéphane Lapierre.

Talitha’s two daughters, 9-year-old Bianka and 4-year-old Alyssa Begnoche, have yet to be identified by the coroner’s office, but are also believed to be among the victims. Relatives announced on Facebook shortly after the accident that they were unaccounted for and presumed dead.

Lapierre lived in an apartment above the fated Musi-Café. Pépin-Lajeunesse, whom friends reportedly called “Pep,” worked as a carpenter and was out at the Musi-Café with childhood friends the night of the accident.

As for the SQ’s ongoing investigation efforts this week, Gaendon was unable to confirm how much space in Lac-Mégantic’s destroyed city centre was left to search, or how long it would continue.

Tuesday 30 July 2013

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/bodies+found+more+victims+identified+M%C3%A9gantic/8723280/story.html

Bangladesh factory collapse victims and workers get help to cope with trauma

When she went to work, Amrita said a grim goodbye to her three children and asked relatives to take care of them if she didn’t come back. She felt as though she were going to her death.

That was April 24, the blackest day in the history of Bangladesh’s garment industry: 1,127 people were killed when the Rana Plaza building in Dhaka collapsed. An inspector had warned it was unsafe; nevertheless, factory bosses ordered the workers back to their machines.

Amrita — not her real name — obeyed. Now a jobless double amputee, the young mother is going through the most wrenching experience of her 22 years, deeply traumatized and struggling to salvage what is left of her life.

She is one of 170 emotionally and physically shattered survivors who have received counselling from teams trained by Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). Dozens of others will also receive help.

“The survivors found themselves amputated, paralyzed and depriving their families of income when they were the only ones working,” said Montreal-based Charlotte Sabbah, an MSF mental health officer who has just returned from two months of training psychology students and outreach workers in Bangladesh.

“They are not only suffering from fear, flashbacks and nightmares, but guilt because they are no longer supporting their children.”

Amrita’s story is the stuff of nightmares. But it is not unusual among the survivors of the catastrophe that injured hundreds of people and left 600 missing after dangerous cracks opened up in the flimsily constructed factory building.

“She was buried under four dying colleagues, her legs were stuck under a beam, and if she moved, more beams would fall,” said Sabbah. “She was trapped for a whole day, and finally when they came to rescue her, they had to cut off both her legs.”

The sole support of her near-destitute family, Amrita was afraid to refuse the demands of her employers in spite of serious fears about the safety of the building, which had been temporarily shut down the previous day.

After the disaster, says Sabbah, the survivors “had lost control of their body, of their environment and anything they expected in life.”

Using a program based on cognitive behavioural therapy, Sabbah trained volunteers to do short-term counselling that helps those with post-traumatic stress to regain control of their emotions and mobilize the strength to carry on with their lives.

One woman who lost three of her best friends and housemates “felt as though her whole life had gone away. Only one of their bodies was found. Spiritually and symbolically, she had to bury them.”

Most of the factory victims were women, who suffered additional stress because of social norms. “It’s terrible to see that their self-image was destroyed,” said Sabbah. “In Bangladesh women don’t have much status. They’re valued for their looks, or the money they bring in, or the children they can bear.”

But men also suffered from post-traumatic stress: the dozens of rescue workers who struggled for 18 days to locate survivors and bodies in perilous conditions and searing heat. Some are now terrified to walk into a building or an enclosed room.

“They were having flashbacks and nightmares,” said Sabbah. “They thought bodies were under their beds. They were startled by any noise that took them back to that terrible scene. They were unable to function.”

The MSF team located traumatized people with the co-operation of hospitals, the Red Cross and community volunteers who gave up days of work to help the survivors.

Some victims who left hospital returned to their family villages to try to start over. “Sewing is the only thing they know, so they are hoping to start small businesses,” Sabbah said.

For many the outlook is dim, in a country where social support is as negligible as justice for the poor. Three months later, says the Wall Street Journal, the authorities have made arrests but no one has yet been charged with a crime. Meanwhile many survivors have yet to obtain compensation.

For Amrita, the disaster brought a tiny glimmer of good news. The 10,000 taka (about $132) she received for the loss of her limbs went to buy her unemployed husband a rickshaw to support the family.

“These people have experienced something so terrible, and in spite of it they want to survive because of their children,” said Sabbah. “I came back impressed and humbled.”

Tuesday 30 July 2013

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/07/29/bangladesh_factory_collapse_victims_get_help_to_cope_with_trauma.html

Japan: Volunteer divers continue search for victims of 3/11 tsunami disaster

Heading out to sea, Junichi Sato takes medicine to control his motion sickness, a problem he never had until the 2011 tsunami killed his mother and young daughter and son.

“I used to have resistance to sea sickness before my family’s boat was swept away by the tsunami,” he said.

Although his family members are among the more than 15,000 people confirmed dead in the March 2011 disaster, Sato keeps searching the ocean for the 2,500 still listed as missing, including 440 Ishinomaki residents, to help others gain closure.

He is not alone in his efforts.

Volunteer divers from across the nation continue to search the seabed off the northeastern city, two years and four months since the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami devastated the Tohoku region.

The volunteers include a civil servant, a police officer, a firefighter and an employee of a measurement instrument company.

The group has decided to end the diving activities off the Kitakami-machi district of Ishinomaki in August. However, the volunteers said they will continue their searching efforts, which started the same year of the disaster, in areas that have remained untouched so far.

“We have to do everything we can do,” said one of the divers, Toshihiko Otsubo, 47, who normally operates a beauty salon in Hiroshima. “That’s all we want.”

On one recent unseasonably chilly morning, the divers took a boat out to misty sea from a fishing port near the mouth of the Kitakami River.

Sato, 36, set a fish-finding sonar on the gunwale before the boat reached the intended location. After the sonar detected sunken debris, the divers entered the water. Taking their turn in pairs, they searched the seabed for bodies.

On the day of the disaster, Sato’s mother and his two children were at the Kitakami branch office of the Ishinomaki City Hall, where more than 50 people were killed in the tsunami. Two pupils who attended the same elementary school as Sato’s children are still missing.

The divers have found cars and fishing vessels on the seafloor, but they have not located any bodies so far.

“I cannot sort out my emotions even now,” said one volunteer, who was a child when his father disappeared in a boating accident.

The divers are aware of the difficulties in finding bodies so long after the disaster. But Sato said they have continued to search out of a desire to return the remains of loved ones to their families.

“I can gain strength when I see the strong motivation of the volunteer members,” Sato said.

Tuesday 30 July 2013

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/life_and_death/AJ201307290094

Death in "Dev Bhoomi": disaster in Hinduism’s holiest place

Prakash Kabra recites his elder brother’s mobile number and I carefully tap it into my phone – already knowing the response, but still with a naïve sense of hope.

"The number you are calling is either switched off or unreachable at the moment. Please try again later," says the automated reply.

It’s a response Prakash has heard countless times over the last six weeks. Yet he continues to call, hoping against hope that his brother – missing since deadly floods and landslides devastated India’s Himalayas – will answer.

Along with 14 other family members, Prakash's brother, a businessman from the city of Lucknow, had travelled to the scenic northern region of Uttarakhand for the "Char Dham Yatra" – the most sacred of pilgrimages for the world's one billion Hindus.

But the Kabra family did not return home and their faces, along with thousands of others, now stare out from posters plastered on the walls of police stations, hospitals and bus stations in towns and villages across the area.

"I last spoke to my elder brother on June 17 at 6 o'clock in the morning. He called me and was screaming, 'There is water everywhere. We are in danger, please help us'," Prakash says at a police station in Uttarakhand's main city, Dehradun, where he registers a missing persons report.

"The phone disconnected after that and I haven't been able to get through since then," he adds.

On June 16 and 17, unprecedented rainfall caused the region's rivers and glacial lakes to unleash torrents of water, which swept away buildings and homes and destroyed roads, bridges and vast tracts of farmland.

The government announced that the 5,748 people missing – most of them pilgrims – were to be presumed dead so families could apply for financial compensation.

But only a few hundred corpses have been recovered since the disaster, local officials say, adding that many bodies are buried under mounds of rubble and debris or have been carried downstream by the mighty Himalyan rivers and may never be found.

So most families continue to live in a state of limbo – unwilling to accept the finality of such news, even though Hindu priests say it is a blessing to have died in such a revered place.

"DEV BHOOMI"

For thousands of years, Hindus have flocked to Uttarakhand’s majestic Himalayan mountains, drawn by the ancient belief that deities such as Lord Shiva and Lord Vishnu resided here.

As a result, the region's lush green valleys with their cascading waterfalls are dotted with countless temples and shrines and the area is often referred to as "Dev Bhoomi" or the "Land of the Gods."

But it is the "Char Dham Yatra" – a pilgrimage route consisting of the four temple towns of Kedarnath, Badrinath, Gangotri and Yamunotri – that is considered the most sacred, attracting hundreds of thousands of people every year.

Undertaking a journey to these sites will not just wash away one's sins, say local Hindu priests, but also guarantee release from the cycle of birth and death, since it is believed that heaven and earth converge in these four locations.

“To die while on pilgrimage of the Char Dham is considered very auspicious," says Umesh Chandra Posti, a senior priest from Kedarnath, a town at the heart of the disaster.

"I too have lost friends and neighbours. I don't know where they are. It's difficult to accept they will never return, but at least I know that they will at last have freedom."

As I stare at the photographs of the missing – of smiling children, of newly married couples and of grandmothers and grandfathers – it is difficult to reconcile the irony of this disaster.

At any other time, it may have brought some peace of mind to know that your loved ones passed away in such a sacred place, but when you have no way of knowing whether they are dead or alive, how can you ever get closure?

I guess for many families the wait will never end. And their anguish will continue.

Tuesday 30 July 2013

http://www.trust.org/item/20130729132642-4tny6/?source=hpeditorial&siteVersion=mobile