Many still missing in ferry accident

The death toll from the sinking of an Australia-bound asylum seeker boat off Indonesia's main Java island rose to 28 on Sunday, with many more still feared missing, police said.

"We found seven more bodies after sweeping the coast this morning, six adults and a boy," Warsono, police chief in the Agrabinta area of Java, where the boat went down, told AFP.

He said the death toll from the accident was now 28.

But officials fear that many more are still missing after the boat carrying would-be refugees from Lebanon, Jordan and Yemen broke into pieces and sank in rough seas south of Java on Friday.

It was the first deadly asylum boat accident since Tony Abbott became Australia's prime minister earlier this month.

It came ahead of his state visit to Indonesia, which begins Monday, where his tough boatpeople policies are likely to be the focus of talks.

About 20 police, military and search and rescue officials were sweeping the coast around Agrabinta in West Java province in the hunt for survivors or bodies.

Sunday 29 September 2013

http://www.news24.com/World/News/Many-still-missing-in-ferry-accident-20130929

Rare picture shows priest praying over Titanic victims before they are buried at sea

They were gathered nine days after the 'unsinkable' liner had gone down in the Atlantic Ocean with the loss of 1,512 lives.

And this haunting black and white photograph taken on board one of the body recovery ships following the Titanic disaster shows a mass funeral for dozens of the dead being buried at sea.

The image - which has been discovered a century on from the disaster in 1912 - shows body bags stacked on the windswept deck while two crewman tip up a stretcher to drop a victim over the side.

The ship's priest, the Reverend Hind, is seen conducting the service in front of the solemn crew, who were gathered days after the Titanic had sunk on its journey from Southampton to New York City.

Although the records show that 166 out of 306 bodies retrieved by the Mackay Bennett ship were buried at sea, no images of the macabre event have been seen by the general public until now.

Most of the victims dropped into the Atlantic were believed to have been chosen because they had no means of identification or were third-class passengers and therefore could not afford a funeral.

In the photo - which has a pre-sale estimate of £5,000 - one of the bodies is clearly labelled number 177, which was William Mayo, a 28-year-old London man who was a leading fireman on the ship.

The image has been owned by the family of one of the crew of the Mackay Bennett until now - as they have made it available for auction at Henry Aldridge and Sons Auctioneers in Devizes, Wiltshire.

Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said: ‘Despite the number of bodies buried at sea, visual records of the occasion, such as this photograph, are almost non-existent, even in period publications.

‘This picture blows away the myth that the burials were an orderly and dignified process. You can clearly see the bodies in brown sacks piled up on the deck, with some piled two or three high.

‘The Reverend Hind is seen holding a prayer book looking at two crewman who appear to be tipping up some kind of platform, presumably committing a body into the sea.

‘The Mackay Bennett spent five days retrieving bodies from the wreck site and had to request for a second vessel to join it because there were so many. This photo shows that the deck was pretty much full up with the victims.’

In the aftermath of the Titanic disaster on April 15, 1912, the ship Carpathia picked up more than 700 survivors from lifeboats.

The Mackay Bennet was a Canadian cable laying ship and the owners of the Titanic, White Star Line, contracted it at a rate of £300 a day to recover the bodies.

It left Halifax, Nova Scotia, on April 17 and arrived at the wreck site on April 21.

The crew conducted burials at sea on the evenings of April 21, 22 and 23 and then of the afternoon of April 24, when it is thought the picture was taken.

In an account of the burials, Reverend Hind later wrote: ‘Anyone attending a burial at sea will most surely lose the common impression of the awfulness of a grave in the mighty deep.

Sunday 29 September 2013

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2437189/Rare-picture-Titanic-victims-shows-prayers-said-bodies-buried-sea.html

Indian officials call off search for bodies in building collapse

Officials in the Indian city of Mumbai have called off their search for more bodies following the collapse of a five-storey apartment building and say the final death toll stands at 60.

Mumbai deputy police commissioner Tanaji Ghadge said all of the 93 people who had been missing were now accounted for.

"The toll has now risen to 60 and we have now called off the search for more bodies in the debris," Mr Ghadge said.

But Alok Avasthy, an official at the National Disaster Response Force, said the death toll may rise depending on whether victims in hospital succumb to their injuries.

Rescuers managed to save 33 people from the building's wreckage in the two-day search.

A male survivor in his 40s was the last to be pulled out from under the twisted iron bars and fallen concrete on Saturday afternoon.

Local officials said 22 families had been housed in the block owned by the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai in the city's eastern suburbs.

It collapsed at dawn (local time) on Friday and the cause is still being investigated, but one person has already been arrested.

The Press Trust of India news agency said the arrested man was accused of carrying out faulty and unauthorised renovation at his rented office-cum-warehouse on the ground floor of the building, which is thought to have caused the collapse.

Municipal authorities said that they would bear the cost of treating the injured and that compensation would be paid to the families of the deceased.

Sunday 29 September 2013

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-29/an-india-building-collapse-search-over/4987740

42 dead, 100 missing in Nigeria river boat accident

A boat overloaded with passengers and goods travelling on the Niger River in central Nigeria has capsized, killing 42 people with 100 others missing, the state rescue agency told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The boat with an estimated 150 people on board "split" in two after setting off from Malilli village in Niger state, said Mohammed Shaba, head of the State Emergency Management Agency.

"As of now, we have lost 42 and 100 are missing," he said of the Friday evening disaster.

Rescue teams were on site, searching the waters for further bodies after what Shaba described as the worst accident to hit the state in recent years.

"We are going to learn a lesson from this," he told AFP.

According to Shaba, the vessel was packed with far too many traders as well as the goods they acquired from a market in Malilli.

While he blamed "overloading" as the primary cause, he also said that high waters on the Niger could have been a contributing factor, following a heavy rainy season in the area.

Nigeria has seen significant flooding in regions across the country in recent years.

The Niger is Africa's third longest river, behind the Nile and the Congo, extending an estimated 4200 kilometres (2600 miles).

The boomerang shaped waterway begins in Guinea, carves north and east through Mali, then back south through Nigeria expelling into the Gulf of Guinea.

Shaba said water levels on parts of the Niger have gotten so dangerously high over the last few years that he has advised people living along the river bank to find a second home where they can stay when the rains peak.

Passenger boats in Nigeria, especially in more remote areas, are often poorly maintained and sometimes incapable of navigating rough waters.

But operators with narrow profit margins typically try to cram on board an excessive number of passengers to boost income.

Boat travel is especially attractive to traders seeking to move goods because of the poor state of Nigeria's roads, which are among the most dangerous in the world.

But boat travel can be equally hazardous, with dozens already killed in Nigeria this year.

In March, nearly 100 people died when a passenger boat that set off from neighbouring Benin capsized off Nigeria's southern Cross Rivers state.

It took days for details of the disaster to emerge and some people survived at sea by clinging to a cooking gas cylinder for several hours.

But the Niger accident could prove to be among the deadliest in Africa in recent years.

In July 2012, a ferry sank in choppy waters as it crossed from mainland Tanzania to the island of Zanzibar, leaving at least 104 people drowned.

In September 2011, more than 200 people perished when the MV Spice Islander, which the authorities admitted was overloaded, sank while sailing between two of the main islands in the Zanzibar archipelago.

Sunday 29 September 2013

http://www.rappler.com/world/regions/africa/40113-nigeria-river-boat-accident