Nine people feared dead as landslide hits Papua New Guinea

Nine people were feared dead Monday after a landslide tore through a village in Papua New Guinea's rugged Highlands region burying homes, reports said.

Villagers were sleeping when the massive slip of earth, trees and debris crashed down a mountain side on Saturday night onto Kenagi village on the border of Eastern Highlands province, the Post Courier newspaper said.

Local councillor David Nondo said one body, of a 10-year-old boy, had been recovered but it would take days to dig up the dead from the landslide which cut the crucial Highlands Highway.

"The area is now a burial ground and we do not want people passing through at will," Nondo told the paper.

"This means nothing -- trucks, buses and passengers -- is allowed to go into or drive over the area on the highway."

The Post-Courier said eight houses were buried, with three people rushed to hospital in serious conditions after being injured in the accident.

Provincial Police Commander John Kale told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that heavy rain appeared to have caused the disaster, which was followed by a second collapse on Sunday morning.

"There is a very big landslide starting from the top of the mountain past the road and all the way down to the river," he said.

Torrential rains have caused landslips in the Eastern Highlands before, with at least seven people killed in 2009 when one engulfed two buses and three houses.

In January 2012, as many as 60 people died when a massive landslide wiped out an entire village in the Southern Highlands.

Tuesday 05 November 2013

http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/19677680/png-landslide-kills-nine/

Bus accident in Sri Lanka leaves 10 dead

Adding to the list of bus tragedies, yet another bus plunged down a cliff in Sri Lanka, killing 10 and injuring many others.

At least 10 people were killed and 18 others injured when a bus skidded off a road and plunged down a cliff in central Sri Lanka, police said on Tuesday.

According to a police statement the bus from a state-owned company was travelling along a mountain road in the central hill town of Bandarawela when it veered off the road and fell down a 350-foot precipice on Monday night.

Five women and five men were killed, while the 18 injured included the driver and the conductor, the statement said. Investigations are on to find the cause of the crash.

Rescue operations were hampered by heavy rain and poor visibility.

Tuesday 05 November 2013

http://news.oneindia.in/international/sri-lanka-bus-falls-from-cliff-10-killed-several-injured-1335995.html

No sign of more survivors in Myanmar boat sinking

Family members are scouring the coastline off western Myanmar a day after a boat carrying at least 70 Muslim Rohingya capsized. Only eight people are believed to have survived.

The overloaded boat was in the Bay of Bengal and headed for Bangladesh when it sank early Sunday, just four hours into the journey.

Community leader Aung Win says many women and children were on board and were hoping to reach third countries.

He says there were no new reports of survivors Monday. Only a few bodies have been recovered.

Myanmar, a predominantly Buddhist nation, has been gripped by sectarian violence in the last year. Many of the 240 people killed and 240,000 others forced to flee their homes have been Rohingya.

Aid agencies have warned of a growing exodus of Rohingyas, who have been displaced by communal violence, attempting the dangerous sea journey.

The boat was thought to be bound for Malaysia, where thousands of Rohingyas have sought sanctuary since violent clashes with Buddhists erupted last year.

Over the past two years, hundreds of thousands of minority Muslims have been forced to flee Burma.

The United Nations describes them as a persecuted religious and linguistic minority from western Burma.

The Burmese government, on the other hand, says they are relatively recent migrants from the Indian sub-continent.

Neighbouring Bangladesh already hosts several hundred thousand refugees from Burma and says it cannot take any more.

Many Rohingya Muslims are living in tents or temporary camps.

Aid agencies say the relentlessly grim conditions will push record numbers out to sea, in flimsy boats, where they are very vulnerable to bad weather, engine failure, or being sold by people-traffickers in Thailand.

The United Nations said on Friday that more than 1,500 people have tried to leave by boat in the past week.

The BBC's Jonathan Head in Bangkok says Burmese authorities have done little to improve the situation of the Rohingyas, despite repeated international appeals.

They are still subjected to forced segregation, denied access to schools and hospitals, and barred from travelling or having more than two children without permission, our correspondent says.

Rohingyas, whom the UN describes as a persecuted religious and linguistic minority from western Burma, are not recognised as Burmese citizens.

Tuesday 05 November 2013

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2013/nov/05/as-myanmar-boat-capsize/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24798448

Sailors from North Korea die in sinking

A number of North Korean sailors were killed when a warship sank during “combat duties” last month, a state newspaper has reported in an unusual admission by the secretive state.

South Korean media said the ship sank during a drill, and North Korea's KCNA state news agency showed images of leader Kim Jong Un laying flowers at the foot of a memorial to the dead.

"Submarine chaser No 233 fell while performing combat duties in mid-October," KCNA said.

The article did not specify what operation it was undertaking. Information in North Korea is strictly controlled, and accidents are rarely publicly admitted or closely covered by state media.

The country's official media did not say how many died in the accident, but said Mr Kim had ordered "measures to find all their bodies", suggesting a high death doll.

The North’s ruling party newspaper Rodong Sinmun gave no figures for the number of dead. But photographs of gravestones in Saturday’s website edition suggested about 15-20 may have died.

The paper showed solemn-faced leader Kim Jong-Un laying flowers at a cemetery specially created for victims of the incident, who “met heroic deaths while performing their combat duties”.

The report gave no details of how the sailors on a ship identified as “submarine chaser no. 233” had died. It did not say where the cemetery was located.

After hearing of the incident, Kim ordered a search to retrieve all the bodies and gave detailed instructions on construction of the cemetery and gravestones, the paper said.

South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper said Monday that two North Korean warships sank last month during an exercise off the eastern port of Wonsan, killing scores of sailors.

Quoting a military source, it said the ships were a Hainan-class 375-ton submarine chaser and a 100 to 200-ton patrol boat.

“The Hainan-class submarine chaser probably sank because it’s old. It was built in China in the 1960s and the North bought it in the mid-70s,” the source was quoted as saying.

North and South Korea have remained technically at war since the Korean conflict ended in an armistice in 1953.

While the North’s military totals more than one million personnel, much of its equipment is aging.

Seoul accused Pyongyang of sending a submarine to sink a South Korean warship in March 2010 with the loss of 46 lives.

Tuesday 05 November 2013

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/world-news/sailors-from-north-korea-die-in-sinking.22602449

http://www.defensenews.com/article/20131104/DEFREG03/311040016/North-Korean-Reports-Warship-Sank-Number-Dead-Unknown?odyssey=nav|head

12 dead in Colombia bus accident

Twelve people were killed and 35 others injured Monday when a bus ran off the road and plunged 80 meters (262 feet) to the bottom of a ravine in southwestern Colombia, authorities said.

The vehicle was traveling along a highway between the towns of Toribio and Jambalo in Cauca province.

“The bus left Jambalo with at least 45 people, the majority of them Indians, who had participated in the festivities taking place here,” the town’s mayor, Silvio Dagua, told reporters.

Cauca Highway Police commander Maj. Richard Sanabria said that the injured were taken to several hospitals, some of them in Popayan, the regional capital.

Terrain difficulties and bad weather in the region have made the recovery of the bodies difficult, the police chief said.

“There are (groups) from Toribio and Jambalo trying to recover the bodies. We’re waiting for the weather to improve to perform an overflight and decide how to proceed,” Sanabria said.

Over the weekend there were two accidents with similar characteristics, the first in the northwestern province of Antioquia which left five people dead and 25 injured, and the other in the central region of Tolima which left four dead and 30 injured.

Tuesday 05 November 2013

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=1148519&CategoryId=12393

Eight killed, many injured in Bolivian plane crash

A Bolivian plane has crashed in the north of the Andean country, killing eight people and injuring 10 others onboard, a media report says.

The Fairchild Swearingen Metroliner aircraft operated by local carrier Aerocon caught fire when it tried to land in Riberalta in Bolivia’s Beni Department, near the Brazilian border, due to heavy rain on Sunday, Reuters reported.

“(There were) 16 passengers and the pilot and co-pilot, of whom 10 survived and eight died,” the director of the Riberalta hospital, Jose Luis Pereira, told reporters, adding, “The pilot and the co-pilot are in the gravest situation.... Seven (bodies) are (so) charred, we can't identify them.”

The small turboprop plane was carrying 18 people onboard when it departed from Beni’s capital city of Trinidad.

The Bolivian airline reported technical problems were to blame.

Bolivian President Evo Morales ordered “a deep investigation” into the accident and “drastic sanctions on the company.”

The latest incident follows another plane crash in the central South American country, when in 2011 four anti-drug UN workers and two Bolivian military pilots were killed after their plane crashed into a tree in a forest in western Bolivia.

Tuesday 5 November 2013

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/11/04/332936/eight-killed-in-bolivian-plane-crash/