Laos recovers crashed plane black boxes

Search teams on Thursday recovered the flight data recorders of a Lao Airlines plane that plunged into the Mekong River in bad weather killing all 49 people on board, officials said.

The black boxes, which include both voice and data recordings, were found early Thursday as part of efforts to recover parts of the stricken craft from the river's fast-flowing waters, according to Yakua Lopankao, director general of Laos' Department of Civil Aviation.

"It has not yet been decided where to send them to be examined, it is up to the air accident investigation committee," he said of the operation, which has been assisted by experts from the French aviation safety agency BEA.

The Lao Airlines turboprop ATR-72 plummeted into the Mekong as it went to land in the southern town of Pakse on October 16 in the country's worst air disaster.

More than half of the 49 passengers and crew were foreigners from some 10 countries.

So far 47 bodies have been recovered, some many kilometres downstream from the crash site as rescuers battled strong currents along the swollen river.

So far, at least 43 of the victims have been identified, according to a Lao Airlines statement on Wednesday.

"Our efforts remain focused on caring for the bereaved families of the victims and doing what we can to alleviate the trauma they are suffering and assist them as much as possible at this difficult time," it said.

The carrier has said the aircraft hit "extreme" bad weather, while witnesses described seeing the plane buffeted by strong winds before plummeting into the Mekong.

According to a passenger list released by the airline, there were 16 Laotians, seven French travellers, six Australians, five Thais, three South Koreans, two Vietnamese, and one national each from the United States, Canada, Malaysia, China and Taiwan.

There were also five crew, including the Cambodian captain.

Founded in 1976, Lao Airlines serves domestic airports and destinations in China, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

Impoverished Laos, a one-party communist state, has seen 29 fatal air accidents since the 1950s, according to the Aviation Safety Network.

Previously the country's worst air disaster was in 1954, when 47 people died in an Air Vietnam crash near Pakse, the organisation said.

Thursday 31 October 2013

http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Regional/2013/10/31/Laos-recovers-crashed-plane-black-boxes.aspx

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Bodies of 92 migrants who died of thirst found in Niger desert (update)

The bodies of 92 migrants, most of them women and children, have been found in northern Niger after their vehicles broke down attempting to cross the vast Sahara desert, authorities said today.

The migrants had set off in two trucks from the uranium mining town of Arlit in northern Niger towards Tamanrasset in Algeria in mid-October, officials said.

After one of the trucks broke down, the second turned back to find help but found itself stranded and the passengers attempted to make it back by foot.

The mayor of Arlit, Maouli Abdouramane, said 92 bodies had been recovered after days of searching - 52 children, 33 women and seven men.

“The search is still going on,” Mr Abdouramane told Reuters by telephone. He said the victims were all from Niger but their final destination was unclear.

A military officer said about 20 people survived the ordeal. Five of those walked for dozens of kilometres across the burning desert back to Arlit to inform authorities.

The bodies were strewn across the desert over a large distance, to within 20 km of the border with Algeria, a second military source said.

The death toll rose after Reuters reported on Tuesday that 10 people died and 50 were missing after the incident.

Most of the people who use the perilous route across the dunes are young African men in search of work in Europe or north Africa, raising questions about the purpose of the doomed convoy of women and children. Many people leave the underdeveloped north of Niger, ranked by the United Nations as the least developed country on earth, each year in search of work.

The trafficking networks which send trucks across the desert from northern Niger to north Africa attract scores of migrants from across West Africa, even from booming economies such as Ghana, dreaming of a more prosperous life in Europe.

More than 32,000 migrants have arrived in southern Europe from Africa so far this year although it was not known if that was the intended destination for this group. While a crackdown by Spanish authorities has largely closed a route from the West African route to the Canary Islands, many migrants seek to make the Mediterranean crossing from north Africa to southern Europe, many of them losing their lives.

Two separate incidents in southern Italy this month underscored the dangers involved when 366 Eritrean migrants drowned in one disaster and about 200 were missing after another boat sank just over a week later.

Thursday 31 October 2013

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/africa/bodies-of-92-migrants-who-died-of-thirst-found-in-niger-desert-1.1579153

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Finding the millions of missing people across the world

The International Commission on Missing Persons is hosting a three day conference called “The Missing – an Agenda for the Future” at the Hague.

The core strategy of the conference is to set out a road map for how the issue of missing people will be addressed in the future. It will look at global initiatives to find missing people and how better to understand the magnitude of the problem.

The Commission was established at the G7 Summit in Lyon, France in 1996 at the request of President Bill Clinton in the aftermath of the war in the Balkans. Its primary role is to ensure the cooperation of governments in locating or identifying those who have disappeared.

The ICMP provides logistical support to the government in the exhumation of mass graves and the identification of bodies using state of the art DNA techniques in the countries of former Yugoslavia.

It has also provided evidence to the domestic and international courts that heard war crimes cases.

In the aftermath of the Bosnian war, around 40,000 people were missing. Because of the work of the Commission which is based in Sarajevo 70 percent were identified. There can be no precise figures for missing persons across the world.

According to estimates anything between 250,000 and one million are missing in Iraq, 50,000 in Syria and at least 26,000 in the Mexico drug wars.

Statistics show how modern conflicts affect civilians. Before the First World War the ratio of casualties – including those who go missing – was seven combatants to one civilian. Now the balance has shifted dramatically. The ratio is one combatant to nine civilians.

The most glaring example of that is the war in Iraq where it is the civilians who are paying the heaviest price. The invasion of Iraq which was ten years ago caused one of the most serious humanitarian crises in the world. The work to locate the missing in Iraq remains daunting.

Natural disasters like the tsunami in Japan are also in the focus of the work of the ICMP. The organisation hopes ways will be found to ensure an international mechanism is available that can provide a structured and sustainable response to all missing persons cases in rich and poor countries alike.

Euronews interviewed Queen Noor of Jordan, who is a commissioner with the International Commission on Missing Persons.

Paul McDowell, euronews: “The title of the conference is ‘The Missing – an Agenda for the Future’. Tell me how difficult is it to look to the future because the causes that have created these problems are so many – whether it is armed conflict, violation of human rights or natural disasters.”

Queen Noor of Jordan: “We are the only organisation in the world that is dealing with missing persons cases in all their dimensions, no matter what the circumstances. And this conference in The Hague is one that we’ve brought together for the first time ever – experts and policy makers – concerning the issue of missing persons and all of the different dimensions of this problem, again regardless of circumstances.”

euronews: “I get the sense that the real difficulty is to prioritise – where and who are in most urgent need of assistance. How will you approach that?”

Queen Noor of Jordan: “ICMP has developed the largest, most efficient and cost effective human identification laboratory system in the world that we have used in the Balkans, and that we have been able to demonstrate that it is possible to account for the missing from those kinds of extraordinarily complex and vicious genocides and abuses of human rights. Our experience there is informing our approach to countries like Libya and Iraq, which we’re working in today. Syria, where we’ve been approached by transitional justice groups, to try to help them begin to plan for post-conflict, and how they might address what are estimated to be about 50,000 people…. 17,000 from the previous regimes, and about 30,000 who have gone missing in this current conflict. One of the ways that we’re talking with them about what we might be able to do in this period now, is perhaps try to collect data – genetic data as well possibly – from those who have been displaced outside the country in camps in Turkey and Jordan and Lebanon, in Iraq and Egypt and elsewhere… try to pull together as much data as possible, which helps us prepare to be able to set into motion the kind of operation that we have been able to achieve such great, unprecedented results with in the western Balkans, in a country like Syria.”

euronews: “Finally, it is difficult to get a concept of those huge figures, but perhaps a couple of high-profile cases recently have really hit home – and that is the cases of missing children that have been in the news. How much of your work in the future will focus on missing children?”

Queen Noor of Jordan: “Women and children form a majority – if you will – of the cases we’ve had to address of missing persons in various parts of the world. In terms of the kinds of cases that you’re discussing, we haven’t yet developed a framework for handling individual cases in specific countries. We’ve been working on a much larger scale. But we do believe that our DNA identification system, that our work with different governments and international organisations – to develop legal frameworks and institutional and even community frameworks for looking at these problems, and trying to draw in as many people as possible to solve a problem – will apply to individual missing children cases as well as to larger scale problems.”

Thursday 31 October 2013

http://www.euronews.com/2013/10/30/finding-the-millions-of-missing-people-across-the-world/

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Lebanese child boat victim identified

The body of a child from the northern city of Akkar has been identified among the victims from the tragic boat accident last month in Indonesia, the National News Agency reported Wednesday.

The body of Ibrahim al-Mahmoud was identified through DNA testing, the Lebanese Charges d’Affaires in Jakarta informed Lebanon’s caretaker Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour, the state-run agency said.

His body will be returned to Lebanon with 33 other victims that have been identified using DNA analysis.

A boat carrying around 80 migrants trying to illegally cross from Indonesia to Australia foundered off the Indonesian coast last month killing over 30 people. Only 18 survived and have returned to Lebanon.

Last week the NNA reported that the bodies of 33 Lebanese who drowned of the Indonesian coast had been identified following DNA analysis, adding that two Lebanese, a man and child, were still missing.

The bodies of the 34 victims will arrive at Beirut’s Rafik Hariri’s International Airport Thursday at 12:30 p.m.

Most of the Lebanese victims hailed from the underdeveloped area of north Lebanon and mainly from the Akkar village of Qabeet.

Thursday 31 October 2013

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2013/Oct-30/236270-lebanese-child-identified-among-indonesia-boat-victims.ashx

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Families of Andhra bus accident victims asked to give samples for DNA test

Families of victims of the Mahbubnagar bus accident have been asked to submit samples for DNA testing at the Andhra Pradesh Forensic Science Laboratory (APFSL) in Hyderabad.

The charred remains of those who died in the bus accident will be handed over to their families only after the DNA test is conducted.

The families and relatives can contact 040-23307138 for the purpose of giving samples for DNA test. Mahbubnagar district collector M Girja Shankar said that out of the 44 dead bodies, four were identified and handed over to the relatives.

The collector said the remaining 40 bodies were shifted to the Osmania General Hospital in Hyderabad after completing the postmortem and DNA test.

He advised the relatives of the deceased to go to the AP Forensic Science Laboratory at Red Hills in Hyderabad on Thursday morning with two passport size photographs of the deceased.

He said DNA tests will be conducted on the blood relatives of the victims on Thursday. Only after the DNA tests are completed, the bodies will be handed over to the family.

The collector said that deceased belonged to Karnataka, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh apart from Andhra Pradesh.

With all the bodies charred beyond recognition, it was a tough task for family members and relatives who rushed to the accident spot with the hope that they would be able to identify their near ones.

According to forensic experts it will take another two days to identify all the dead bodies through the DNA test.

A teams of doctors conducted postmortem on all the 44 bodies at the spot.

Fifty-two people, including 50 passengers, were travelling in the Volvo bus when the tragedy struck.

Thursday 31 October 2013

http://www.bangaloremirror.com/bangalore/others/DNA-tests-to-identify-charred-bodies/articleshow/24948755.cms

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