Weather clears up: Body found in South Korean ferry

Divers have found another body trapped in a sunken South Korean ferry as the search for more than two dozen missing passengers resumed after strong winds and waves halted the effort for three days.

Searchers have found 276 bodies, and 28 passengers remain missing.

Most of the victims were students from a single high school south of Seoul.

Improved weather allowed the search to resume early on Tuesday, government task force spokesman Ko Myung-seok said.

Nearly a month after the ferry sank, the search teams have been hampered by bad weather, floating debris inside the ship and, lately, the vessel's deterioration.

According to Ko, it has been difficult to enter some of the rooms because waterlogged walls have partially collapsed and blocked passages.

Tuesday 13 May 2014

http://www.skynews.com.au/news/world/asiapacific/2014/05/13/body-found-in-south-korean-ferry.html

continue reading

Rough weather delays search for bodies on sunken Korean ferry

Bad weather prevented divers from searching inside the sunken, deteriorating South Korean ferry for a third day Monday.

Nearly a month after the ferry sank, 29 passengers remain missing, with 275 bodies recovered so far, most of them students from a single high school south of Seoul. No bodies have been found since Friday.

A high seas watch was lifted Monday morning but the search was not immediately resumed because of high waves and a rolling sea swell, emergency task force spokesman Ko Myung-seok said. Officials later said in a statement that the mission was further delayed because workers had to restore wires that disconnected from an anchor on a search barge during the bad weather.

Coast guard official Yang Jong-ta said the underwater search would resume as soon as the waves calmed.

Besides bad weather, the deterioration of the ferry is another big problem. Ko said it’s difficult to enter some of the rooms as the entryways have been blocked because some waterlogged walls have partially collapsed. Ko said the team will open new entrances by using iron levers and other devices.

Meanwhile, South Korea’s Welfare Ministry honoured three dead crew members on the Sewol ferry by designating them as “martyrs.”

The ministry said 22-year-old Park Ji-young, 28-year-old Kim Ki-woong and 28-year-old Jung Hyun-seon sacrificed themselves by remaining in the sinking vessel to help others escape.

The three can be buried in a national cemetery, and their bereaved families will be eligible for financial compensation and medical assistance.

Only 172 people, including 22 of the 29 crew members, survived the April 16 disaster. All 15 surviving crew members involved in the ferry’s navigation have been arrested on suspicion of negligence and failing to protect passengers.

Tuesday 13 May 2014

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/rough-weather-delays-search-for-bodies-on-sunken-korean-ferry/article18606867/

continue reading

At least 15 dead in fan stampede at Congo soccer stadium

A stampede at a soccer stadium in Congo's capital killed at least 15 people after angry fans threw rocks from the stands, prompting security officers to fire tear gas that caused crowds to flee in panic, government officials and witnesses said Monday.

The stampede at the Tata Raphael Stadium in Kinshasa happened toward the end of a match Sunday between popular teams AS Vita Club and TP Mazembe.

At least 21 others were injured during the melee, said Gov. Andre Kimbuta, who has set up a commission to investigate the incident.

Congolese government spokesman Lambert Mende on Monday defended the actions of the security officers.

"It is false to say that the violence was started by the tear gas, which was used to protect people being threatened by elements in the stands who were acting like militiamen," he said.

Three of the injured remained in the hospital, Mende said.

Spectator Kanga Yves said the crowds were trampled as they tried to flee the tear gas, and that he had seen at least eight bodies.

Witnesses said angry fans threw objects onto the field including rocks late in the match on the last day of the league season. The home team, AS Vita, was losing 1-0.

The stampede caused a recently restored wall and gate to collapse, the Confederation of African Football said in a statement.

More than 20 people were killed on April 25 in the town of Kikwit in southwest Congo when generators failed during a festival honoring a popular singer, plunging the stadium into darkness and causing a stampede.

Sunday’s Kinshasa stadium stampede also came days after Ghana marked the anniversary of Africa’s worst football disaster. Over 120 people were killed on May 9, 2001 when police fired tear gas at a stadium in the Ghanaian capital Accra because of crowd trouble at a game, also causing a stampede in the stands.

Most recently, more than 70 people died in a riot at a football game in the Egyptian city of Port Said in February 2012. The riot was linked to political violence in Egypt following the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak as president.

Tuesday 13 May 2014

http://www.tampabay.com/sports/soccer/stampede-kills-15-in-congo/2179490

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2014/05/12/at-least-15-dead-in-fan-stampede-at-congo-soccer-stadium/

continue reading

At least 14 die as migrant boat headed for Italy sinks off Libyan coast

At least 17 people died when a boat carrying hundreds of migrants sank in waters between Libya and southern Italy, navy officials say.

Some 200 others were rescued from the boat, which went down south of the Italian island of Lampedusa.

This comes a day after it emerged that 36 migrants drowned last week when their boat sank off the Libyan coast.

Libya is used as a departure point by many African migrants trying to enter the European Union illegally.

The boat sank on Monday about 185 km (115 miles) south of Lampedusa, Italy's Ansa news agency said.

An Italian navy spokesperson said it was not clear how many people were on board, so the number of missing passengers was unknown, AP news agency reported.

A tug boat servicing nearby oilrigs saw that the migrant boat was in trouble. As it went to help, the vessel capsized.

The rescue operation was conducted under an Italian military and humanitarian program called Mare Nostrum, Latin for “our sea,” the Roman name for the Mediterranean. The program is meant to control the flow of migrants who try to enter Europe by boat, and to assist vessels in distress. It has been monitoring the southern Mediterranean since last October, after a boat sank off the small Italian island of Lampedusa and 350 migrants died. Continue reading the main story

The Mare Nostrum program has come under political attack in recent weeks because of a surge in migrants reaching Italy, putting a severe strain on the government’s resources for receiving them. Critics said that about 9 million euros ($12.4 million) a month was too costly and not effective enough: as of Monday, 36,627 migrants had landed along Italy’s southern coast in 2014, according to Interior Ministry statistics. Most came from Africa or the Middle East.

Italy has been calling on the European Union to do more to help the country deal with the inflow, and Angelino Alfano, the interior minister, added his voice on Monday. “Europe isn’t helping us,” he said, according to ANSA, the Italian news agency. “While Italy was saving survivors of the shipwreck,” he added, Europe “must take care of the living.”

Roberta Pinotti, the defense minister, told Parliament last week that since it began last October, Mare Nostrum had saved the lives of 27,790 migrants, including more than 3,000 children, and had arrested 207 people for human trafficking. “The numbers are shocking,” Ms. Pinotti told lawmakers, “but let’s think of how tragic the count of the loss of human lives could have been.”

Flavio Di Giacomo, the Italian spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, said that “Mare Nostrum has saved many lives, but it’s clear that these trips are dangerous, so shipwrecks are not possible to avoid.”

Nine out of 10 refugees who enter Italy by sea pass through Libya, a former Italian colony and the closest part of North Africa to Italian territory, Ms. Pinotti said. More than two-thirds of them could qualify for political refugee status.

The flood of migrants is a major issue in Italy, one that the populist Northern League has made a cornerstone of its campaign in the European Parliament elections later this month. One candidate created a video in which migrants from various countries are seen warning their compatriots that Italy is not the Promised Land and that the traffickers who would smuggle them across the sea by boat “are assassins and fraudsters.”

Separately, Libya's navy said it had rescued 340 migrants from another boat after it began to take in water off the coast of the western town Sabratha, AFP reported.

On Sunday, Libyan officials said at least 36 migrants from various sub-Saharan African countries drowned when their boat sank off the Libyan coast last week.

Late last year, hundreds of migrants drowned when two boats sank in waters off Lampedusa. Italy has since stepped up navy and coastguard operations.

Unseaworthy, overcrowded vessels are continually setting out from Libya, carrying people who hope for better lives in Europe after fleeing war and poverty in various parts of Africa and the Middle East, the BBC's Alan Johnston in Rome report

Tuesday 13 May 2014

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/13/world/europe/at-least-14-die-as-migrant-boat-headed-for-italy-sinks-off-libyan-coast.html?_r=0

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-27379493

continue reading