India: At least 18 dead in Mumbai stampede

A stampede killed at least 18 people in India's financial hub Mumbai on Saturday when a large crowd gathered to pay their last respects to a Muslim spiritual leader, police said.

More than 40 people were injured in the chaos that erupted shortly after midnight local time (1830 GMT) when the gates were shut to the residence of Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin, who died aged 102 Friday.

"Organisers had closed the gates. The crowd was so huge that people started suffocating, some fainted and then people began running and falling on each other in a panic," Mumbai police chief Satyapal Singh told reporters.

In reply to a question, Singh confirmed that 18 people died and admitted there was a lapse in crowd control as police and organisers had failed to anticipate the huge turnout of devotees.

Singh added that he had ordered a thorough investigation into what led to the pre-dawn disorder.

Burhanuddin, who was due to celebrate his 103rd birthday in a few weeks, died of a heart attack at his home, a spokesman said.

He was a leader of the Dawoodi Bohra community, a sect of Shiite Islam.

Stampedes at public events in India are common as large numbers of people pack into congested areas.

Panic can spread quickly and, with few safety regulations in place, the result is often lethal.

Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde told reporters: "I feel very sorry about the tragic incident", and expressed his condolences for the 18 deaths.

Thousands adorned in white scarves and skullcaps had gathered Saturday on the streets of Mumbai for the funeral procession of Burhanuddin, TV footage showed.

Narendra Modi, leader of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party who has been vilified for deadly anti-Muslim riots in his Gujarat state in 2002, called the incident "unfortunate" on Twitter.

"Stampede near Syedna Sahib's residence is very unfortunate. Condolences to families of those who lost their lives & prayers with the injured," Modi tweeted.

The spiritual leader, succeeded by his 70-year-old son Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin, led the Dawoodi Bohra community for nearly five decades.

Burhanuddin had succeeded his father Syedna Taher Saifuddin in 1965.

He was honoured with civilian titles such as the Star of Jordan and Order of the Nile by the governments of Jordan and Egypt.

The latest disaster comes just months after some 115 devotees were crushed to death or drowned on a bridge near a Hindu temple in October, when crowds panicked after rumours that the bridge was going to collapse in the central state of Madhya Pradesh.

In 2006, another stampede outside the same temple killed 50 people as they crossed a river, prompting authorities to build the bridge.

India has a long history of deadly stampedes at religious festivals, with at least 36 people trampled to death last February as pilgrims headed home from the Kumbh Mela religious festival on the banks of the river Ganges.

Some 102 Hindu devotees were killed in a stampede in January 2011 in the state of Kerala, while 224 pilgrims died in September 2008 as thousands of worshippers rushed to reach a 15th-century hill-top temple in Jodhpur.

Saturday 18 January 2014

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Mass grave fuels fear of thousands buried in Sri Lanka war zone

The discovery of a mass grave containing more than 30 skulls in northern Sri Lanka has fuelled speculation that there may be many more like it containing the remains of thousands who went missing during the island nation's nearly three-decade war.

The police have suggested that the Tamil Tiger rebels it defeated five years ago could be responsible for the burial, uncovered near a historic Hindu temple in the district of Mannar. Sri Lanka is already under international pressure to address alleged wartime human rights violations.

A failure to probe the discovery could fuel the anger of Western nations demanding an independent international investigation into suspected abuses. The remains, which workers stumbled on as they dug up roadside paving for a water project, are yet to be identified.

The first mass grave to be found in the former war zone, it is spread over an area measuring about 400 square feet (37 square metres) and is 5 feet (1.5 metres) deep. "The bodies are buried in several layers. Unfortunately, the top layer of the bodies have been destroyed by the road construction work," said Dhanajaya Waidyaratne, the Judicial Medical Officer in charge of the excavation.

More than 100,000 people were killed in the war between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the government military since it started in 1983 and thousands, mainly ethnic- minority Tamils, are still unaccounted for or missing.

A U.N. panel has said around 40,000 mainly Tamil civilians died in the ferocious final months of the conflict, but Sri Lanka has disputed that figure. Both sides committed atrocities, but army shelling killed most victims, it concluded. Police Spokesman Ajith Rohana said initial forensic evidence suggested the bodies may have been buried at least 15 years ago. "This area was controlled by the LTTE for over 20 years and there are reports that hundreds of soldiers went missing in this area. But we don't know for sure. The investigations are continuing," Rohana told Reuters.

THOUSANDS MORE Residents and a religious leader in Mannar say, however, that the area was controlled mainly by the army from 1990. "This grave has grown-up people and children, and there are some holes in the skulls believed to be from gunshots," the Catholic Bishop of Mannar, Rayappu Joseph, who went to inspect the mass grave and the skeletons, told Reuters. "We don't know who killed these people. This is an area that was held by army for a long time. Wherever there has been LTTE or army camps, we must dig."

A top military official denied that the area was under army control during the war. "The area changed hands between the LTTE, the Indian Peacekeeping Force and army over time," he said, declining to be named.

The former political proxy of the Tigers, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), which was voted to power in northern provincial polls last September, said the mass grave was the tip of an iceberg and there must be many more. "The loss of lives, according to us, is between 75,000 to 150,000.

Where are those remains?" TNA legislator M.A. Sumanthiran told Reuters. "They must be somewhere. If they were put into incinerators and destroyed, we don't know. But we don't think more than 100,000 would have been dealt with like that." Last year, Sri Lanka set up a presidential commission to investigate a mass grave with remains of more than 150 people in a central province.

The evidence was sent to China for forensic investigations and so far there has been no conclusion. Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said it may be true that the LTTE was responsible for the latest find. "Unless there is real transparency in the forensic investigation, we'll never be sure," he said in an emailed comment. "But we know they won't want to open a Pandora's Box that would incriminate many senior figures."

Saturday 18 January 2014

http://www.firstpost.com/world/mass-grave-fuels-fear-of-thousands-buried-in-sri-lanka-war-zone-1346453.html?utm_source=ref_article

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