Flooding in Afghanistan kills 50 people and leaves thousands homeless

Flooding in a remote part of northern Afghanistan has killed more than 50 people and forced thousands to flee their homes, officials have said.

It was the latest in a string of deadly flash floods, landslides and avalanches in Afghanistan's rugged northern mountains, where roads are poor and many villages are virtually cut off from the rest of the country.

Lt Fazel Rahman, the police chief in the Guzirga i-Nur district of the north-eastern Baghlan province, said on Saturday that 54 bodies have been recovered, including the remains of women and children, but many others are still missing. He said the death toll could climb to 100 and called for emergency assistance from the central government.

"So far no one has come to help us. People are trying to find their missing family members," Rahman said, adding that the district's police force was overstretched by the scale of the disaster.

An exact death toll remained unclear. A statement from President Hamid Karzai's office said 58 people had been killed, while others put the toll higher.

General Mohammad Zahir Azimi, spokesman for the Afghan defence ministry, said two army helicopters had been sent to the area to provide assistance.

The Afghanistan natural disaster management authority began shipping out stockpiles of food and other supplies in Baghlan province to the affected area, said Mohammad Aslim Sayas, deputy director of the agency.

He said a delegation was sent to the affected villages to assess their needs.

Guzirga i-Nur district is located more than 85 miles (140km) north of the provincial capital, Puli Khumri.

Jawed Basharat, the spokesman for the Baghlan provincial police, said they were aware of the flooding, but that it would take eight to nine hours for them to reach the area by road.

Afghans living in the northern mountains have largely been spared from the country's decades of war, but are no strangers to natural disasters.

Last month, a landslide triggered by heavy rain buried large sections of a remote north-eastern village in the Badakhshan province which borders China, displacing some 700 families. Authorities have yet to provide an exact figure on the number of dead from the 2 May landslide, and estimates have ranged from 250 to 2,700. Officials say it will be impossible to dig up all the bodies.

A landslide in Baghlan province in 2012 killed 71 people. After days of digging unearthed only five bodies, authorities decided to halt the recovery effort and turn the area into a memorial for the dead.

Saturday 07 June 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/07/afghanistan-flash-flooding-landslides

Death toll in the Sewol ferry tragedy has now climbed to 290

Two more bodies have been found this week; 14 people are still missing, presumed dead.

A search team recovered another body from the submerged Sewol ferry in South Korea on Friday, raising the death toll to 290. The government’s disaster-response team said that military, coast guard and civilian divers discovered the body of the male victim on the third deck of the capsized ferry and are awaiting confirmation of his identity. Fourteen people remain missing.

The retrieved body is the second found this week after a lull in recoveries since May 21. On Thursday, a body was found floating 25 miles (40 km) away from the site of the sunken ship. In a statement, the government task force said it used fingerprints to identify the body as a passenger from the ship. The victim was traveling on the doomed vessel with his wife and two sons to Jeju Island.

The rescue teams are now planning to break the hull around the third and fourth floors of the ship to enter inside the still inaccessible cabins where more bodies are believed to be trapped.

Apart from third and fourth floors, the rescuers are combing the foyer of the fifth floor.

The authorities have ruled out the possibility of pulling the ship out of the water until the families of the victims still believed to be trapped give their consent.

The 6,825-tonne Sewol was sailing from Incheon city, east to Seoul, to the southern island of Jeju when it sank facing the southeastern coast of the Korean peninsula with over 300 passengers aboard.

Investigations revealed that the ferry was carrying triple its capacity, and had gone through remodelling two years ago to extend it capacity.

Saturday 07 June 2014

http://time.com/2836274/sewol-ferry-south-korea-toll-290/ http://www.newstrackindia.com/newsdetails/2014/06/06/199--Another-body-recovered-from-sunken-South-Korean-ferry-.html

Marshall Islands: World War II skeletons washed from graves by rising seas

Skeletons of World War II soldiers are being washed from their graves by the rising Pacific Ocean as global warming leads to inundation of islands that saw some of the fiercest fighting of the conflict.

On the day Europe commemorates the 70th anniversary of the storming of Normandy beaches in the D-Day landings, a minister from the Marshall Islands, a remote archipelago between Hawaii and the Philippines, told how the remains of 26, probably Japanese soldiers, had been recovered so far on the isle of Santo.

“There are coffins and dead people being washed away from graves; it’s that serious,” Tony de Brum, minister of foreign affairs for the Marshall Islands, said today. Tides “have caused not just inundation and flooding of communities where people live but have also done severe damage in undermining regular land so that even the dead are affected.”

Spring tides from the end of February to April had flooded communities, he told a group of reporters at the latest round of United Nations climate talks in Bonn.

The minister’s comments bring home the stark future for low-lying island nations as the planet warms, causing sea levels to rise. The Marshall Islands, a string of more than 1,000 such isles with a population of about 70,000, is about 2 meters (7 feet) at its highest point, according to de Brum.

The tropical western Pacific is a region the UN said this week is experiencing almost four times the global average rate of sea level increase, with waters creeping up by 12 millimeters (half an inch) a year between 1993 and 2009. The global average pace is 3.2 millimeters a year.

“Communities in the Marshalls, because we are atolls, are either along the lagoon shoreline or the ocean shoreline,” de Brum said. “If you want to move away from traditional community sites, you are moving inland for a few yards and then you’re already moving closer to the ocean on the other side. So there’s not very much room for maneuver.”

The UN projects the global average sea level may increase 26 centimeters to 98 centimeters (10 inches to 39 inches) by the end of the century.

The Marshall Islands were used as a base by the Japanese Navy in the run-up to the attack on Pearl Harbor during WWII. The U.S. Navy based at Pearl Harbor is now testing the skeletons washed up to identify and repatriate them, according to de Brum.

“We think they’re Japanese soldiers, but there are no broken bones or any indication of being war casualties,” he said. “We think maybe it was suicide or something similar. The Japanese are sending a team into help us in September.”

Friday 06 June 2014

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-06/world-war-ii-skeletons-washed-from-graves-by-rising-seas.html

Yemen: 60 African migrants drown as boat capsizes off coast

Sixty migrants from Somalia and Ethiopia have drowned in the worst disaster to occur off the coast of Yemen this year, the United Nations has said.

Two Yemeni crew members also died when the boat capsized in the Red Sea.

"The tragedy is the largest single loss of life this year of migrants and refugees attempting to reach Yemen via the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden," the UN's refugee agency said.

After the incident, witnesses said that the bodies of dozens of illegal immigrants were found on the beaches of Yemen.

Approximately 50 bodies were found and buried near the town of Zoubab. Local residents used a bulldozer to bury the migrants in a mass grave.

An unnamed official said that the capsized boat was one of two which were travelling in convoy.

The first boat, holding the 60 immigrants, capsized while the second boat, carrying 45 migrants, was captured and those on board were arrested.

This week, Yemen's Ministry of the Interior released a statement saying that up to 2,500 African immigrants arrived in Yemen in May via boats from Somalia.

This influx has led to fears within the country that some Somali members of al-Shabaab may be disguising themselves as immigrants to sneak into the country, which already acts as a haven for al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) militants.

Friday 06 June 2014

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/yemen-60-african-migrants-drown-boat-capsizes-off-coast-1451544

Two more bodies pulled from collapsed Samarinda shophouse

Police searching for survivors under a collapsed shophouse construction have pulled two more bodies from the rubble, bringing the death toll to 11 and leaving one person unaccounted for, police said.

“The team is still searching but the remaining victim has not been found,” Samarinda Police chief Sr. Comr. Antonius Wisnu said on Friday. “We believe there is only one more victim trapped under the debris, and we’re all still searching for him.”

Eighty four workers were trapped inside the Cendrawash Permai house when the half-constructed building collapsed on Tuesday. Seventy two workers managed to escape from the building. Two were found alive on Tuesday, but later died in the hospital. The other nine were found dead between Tuesday and Friday.

The latest victims found on Friday were identified as Toni, 35, and Jono, 50. Both men were from Ponorogo, East Java.

The bodies of seven victims have been sent to their hometowns after identification by the East Kalimantan Disaster Victim-Identification team. The other men will be returned to their families soon.

The early investigation shows the contractors did not construct the building according to the plans submitted to the permit office, allegedly skimping on the steel frame and diluting the concrete mix.

Friday 06 June 2014

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/update-two-bodies-pulled-collapsed-samarinda-shophouse/