Greece recovers bodies of four migrants

Greek divers recovered the bodies on Friday of four migrants who drowned while their boat was being towed by a coastguard vessel last month.

The bodies of two adults and two children were brought to the surface from the wreckage of their boat, 73 meters (240 ft) below the surface of the Aegean Sea, the coastguard said in a statement.

“There were also other bodies ... who could not be recovered,” it said.

Two people were confirmed drowned and ten declared missing on January 24, when the boat capsized.

Greek prosecutors launched an inquiry after the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, human rights groups and political parties asked whether the coastguard itself had caused the accident by trying to tow the boat toward Turkish waters, as some of the survivors have said.

Migrant drownings are not uncommon in Greece, a gateway to the European Union, but the latest incident has drawn accusations that Greece breached EU law by trying to push the 28 migrants back to Turkey, where they had set to sea.

The coastguard says they were towing the boat towards Greek waters, not to Turkey.

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has made illegal immigration a priority for his government and for Greece's six-month stint as holder of the rotating EU presidency. Greece has long complained of being overwhelmed by migrants and its economic crisis has boosted anti-immigrant sentiment.

Criticism of the government's handling grew after television footage showed survivors arriving at the port of Piraeus near Athens, recounting in tears how they watched their children drown as coastguard officials looked on.

Sunday 09 February 2014

http://www.iol.co.za/news/world/greece-recovers-bodies-of-four-migrants-1.1643896

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Death toll from Colombian prison fire climbs to 16

The death toll from a prison fire in Colombia's northern city of Barranquilla has climbed to 16, local authorities said on Thursday.

The fire on Jan. 27 at the city's Modelo Prison started when inmates set fire to mattresses after wardens used tear gas to stop a clash between members of rival gangs.

On Thursday, Alma Solano, local health secretary in Barranquilla, said the death of inmates who had been taken to hospital for injuries brought the toll to 16.

"Between yesterday and today, the death toll has climbed to 16 from 14. One of the inmates had burns over 40 percent of his body as well as (damage to) his respiratory system," she said.

Prison authorities said 15 inmates are still hospitalized and security measures have been strengthened at the hospitals after one of them attempted to escape.

Friday 07 February 2014

http://english.cri.cn/6966/2014/02/07/2941s811722.htm

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14 killed, 7 injured in western Nepal bus accident

Fourteen people were killed and seven injured when their bus plunged into a river in western Nepal, police said on Thursday.

The bus fell into a river at Chidipani village in Palpa district early on Thursday morning, Xinhua reported.

The identities of the deceased are yet to be established. The injured passengers have been rushed to a local hospital.

“We are investigating the cause of the accident and rescue operations are going on,” police officer Shiva Kumar Shrestha said.

Local residents, police and army personnel are carrying out the rescue operations.

Bus accidents take place frequently in Nepal due to poor road conditions, lack of trained drivers and overloading of passengers.

Friday 07 February 2014

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/kt-article-display-1.asp?xfile=data/international/2014/February/international_February142.xml§ion=international

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At least 14 dead in bus accident in northern Philippines

Fourteen people, including two foreign-tourists, were killed after a passenger bus from Manila fell into a 120-meter ravine in a mountainous area along the Banaue-Bontoc Road in sitio Paggang, Barangay Talubin in Bontoc town on Friday morning.

The crash happened in Bontoc, a resort town 280 kilometres (175 miles) north of Manila known for its mountainside rice terraces.

Thirty-one others were injured, said Police Provincial Director Oliver Enmodias.

Police reported that a Florida (TXT 872) passenger bus was negotiating a difficult part of the road in Bontoc town, near the boundary of Ifugao and Mountain Province when it plunged into the ravine.

The Office of Civil Defence said the bus from Manila had about 47 passengers on board. Fairlane Amungan, a provincial disaster response official, said authorities were still determining the exact number of people on the bus as they searched for more victims.

The bus came from its terminal in Sampaloc, Manila. The accident happened at around 7:20 a.m.

Supt. Ramir Saculles, Mt. Province deputy police director for Operations, said that most of the recovered bodies were mutilated due to the impact of the crash.

Fourteen of the passengers died on the spot including a Canadian and a Dutch national, he said.

Among the injured were a Dutch woman and the driver of the bus, who were taken to hospital, Enmodias added.

Local police spokesman Superintendent Davy Vicente Limmong said they suspect human error or a mechanical problem was the cause of the accident, as there was no traffic and the weather was clear

Saculles said that there is a possibility that the driver of the bus dosed off. He also mentioned that mechanical trouble could have also caused the accident.

Mt. Province Gov. Leonard Mayaen assured that the local government will do its best to be able to provide the needs of the victims.

Poorly-maintained buses are the backbone of land transport in the Philippines but they have been involved in frequent accidents, leading to calls for tighter regulations

Friday 07 February 2014

http://www.theprovince.com/news/crashes+ravine+Philippines+killing+injuring+including+Dutch/9478976/story.html

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Investigating genocide in Somaliland

Hargeisa, Somaliland – Frankincense wafts through the air of a quiet building on the outskirts of Hargeisa, in the self-declared republic of Somaliland. It masks the odour of the remains of 38 men, whose skeletons are packed into cardboard boxes.

The tattered containers will be opened this month with the arrival of a forensics team on February 10. Somaliland officials want to show that the men were victims of a clan-based killing spree carried out by Somalia’s government in the 1980s.

They say as many as 200,000 men, women and children were executed and buried in mass graves. They accuse Somalia’s late dictator, Mohamed Siad Barre, of atrocities and want to put his alleged henchmen on trial.

“Everybody is missing a relative. Fathers, mothers, brothers, cousins,” said Khadar Ahmed Like, who runs the territory’s War Crimes Investigation Commission. “It is about getting the perpetrators in court. Unless we learn lessons, heads of state can do what they want.”

This month’s post-mortems mark the latest bid to secure justice for Somaliland’s victims. The atrocities date back to when Somaliland was part of Somalia and governed by Barre from the capital, Mogadishu.

In the 1980s, his increasingly authoritarian regime cracked down on the rebel Somalia National Movement (SNM) and targeted members of the Isaaq clan from northwestern Somalia who had created the group.

National forces arrested Isaaq clansmen suspected of having links to the SNM between 1984-88, commissioners say. Men, women and children were bound and frogmarched to the edges of towns and executed.

Somalilanders recount gruesome stories of Isaaq schoolchildren being killed and having their blood drained to provide transfusions to injured soldiers.

Grisly crackdown

Yusuf Mire, 58, is still angry about what happened. He points to the amputated stump of his left arm, where he was shot by Somali national forces during a crackdown in the central Somaliland town of Burao in 1988.

“My relatives were taken from the house to be slaughtered,” he told Al Jazeera. “We want recognition that genocide took place in Somaliland. We will send this to the UN and get the right to be separated from the rest of Somalia.”

In 1988, Barre sent aircraft and troops to the SNM stronghold of Hargeisa, killing more than 40,000 people and reducing the city to rubble. But the campaign backfired and consolidated the opposition forces, which took Mogadishu in January 1991.

Four months later, Somaliland broke away from Somalia. While Somalia collapsed into more than two decades of civil war, Somaliland gradually developed better security, a livestock trade, its own currency and democratic elections.

Evidence of atrocities emerged in May 1997, when heavy rains washed away dirt to uncover skeletons from Hargeisa’s mass graves. But efforts to raise the profile of the atrocities failed to gain traction beyond the isolated region.

“We are now going to bring this to the international arena,” Somaliland’s Foreign Minister Mohamed Bihi Yonis, told Al Jazeera. “The perpetrators are hanging around, living a normal life. Those who are living in the West, we must go after them.”

This latest drive, funded by the US-based Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA), saw the 38 bodies exhumed in September 2012. This month’s visit by an eight-person team will study the skeletons for evidence of systematic killings and will excavate a second site.

“Hargeisa is a graveyard,” said Jose Baraybar, a forensics expert who manages the team. “Some say there are 200,000 bodies under the ground. Others say 60,000. Nobody really knows. That’s why we have to get the record straight.”

Gathering evidence

They will look for bindings, close-range headshot wounds and other signs of systematic killing, said Baraybar, who has worked on probes in Haiti, Bosnia and elsewhere. Evidence that victims hailed from the same clan could indicate genocide, rather than mass-murder.

The three-year project will train locals to unearth Somaliland’s 226 known mass graves. The commission has listed 33 suspects for prosecutions. They include Barre’s son-in-law, Mohamed Said Hirsi, better known as “General Morgan”.

But there the project hits a snag, because Somaliland is not recognised by other countries.

Officials in Hargeisa lack the clout to push for a UN-backed tribunal, such as those that prosecuted the criminals of Rwanda and Yugoslavia. Legally, Somaliland is part of Somalia, which has not joined the International Criminal Court.

“They are a long way from launching prosecutions,” said Baraybar. “All of the killers have left Somaliland – they’re in Somalia, the US and Europe. Prosecution is very difficult for a country that is not a country yet.”

Down south in Mogadishu, there is little appetite for war crimes tribunals – either for Barre’s brutality in Somaliland or any other atrocity that has occurred in years of violence between rival clans, Islamists and foreign forces.

Like, a 64-year-old father-of-eight who lived in exile in the 1980s, said the suspects include members of Somalia’s government and parliament – although he declined to reveal their names for fear of repercussions.

Some live in Somalia, but others are in Kenya, Europe and the US, he said. Prosecutions must begin soon because the atrocities started almost 30 years ago, and some of the masterminds have already died.

Not all perpetrators have escaped justice. In 2012, seven Somali victims secured a $21 million judgement against Mohamed Ali Samantar, a Barre-era prime minister, for planning the torture and killing of Isaaq clansmen, in a US court.

It was one of three civil cases that the CJA has helped bring against Somalis who migrated to the US, using a statute that provides civil remedies for overseas abuses. But such cases fall short of the criminal tribunal that many in Somaliland want.

‘We remember’

The bombing of Hargeisa and other atrocities cast long shadows across the breakaway region. Few Somalilanders want to rejoin Somalia, despite recent security gains under a UN-backed government in Mogadishu.

Somaliland parents tell their children stories about the cruelties. The cash-strapped government spends $50,000 on the war crimes commission each year, and is building a $300,000 museum to showcase skulls and weapons from the bloody era.

“When the former Somali government controlled the country, many Somaliland people were killed,” said Mohamed Jamal Emil, a 21-year-old who lives in a hut on the outskirts of Hargeisa. “It was a long time [ago], but we remember. My parents told me.”

Somaliland diplomats are in talks with counterparts from Mogadishu over long-term autonomy and independence. The atrocities and prospects for a tribunal could feature in the negotiations.

For Baraybar, the war-crimes sleuth, there is more to this probe than the prosecutions it may yield.

“While perpetrators die, the dead remain where they are. As long as they remain where they are, they tell us a story. That story has a healing power. Hearing that story is the right of those who survived, and of future generations,” he said.

“The grandchild must know what happened to his grandfather.”

Friday 07 February 2014

http://somalilandpress.com/investigating-genocide-in-somaliland-2-48059

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Ritual killings on the rise in Zambia

Mutilated bodies – often missing arms, tongues, lips, genitals or skin – are being found with increasing frequency in different parts of Zambia in what authorities say are ritual killings.

"We're amazed by the increased number of bodies discovered with parts missing," Police Deputy Inspector-General Solomon Jere told Anadolu Agency.

"This is a mystery we need to solve," he asserted.

"Sometimes, we're forced to agree with… people claiming that these acts are nothing less than acts of ritual killing," Jere said.

Recently, the dismembered body of a 19-year-old student, from which certain body parts and facial skin had been removed, was discovered in Lusaka.

Earlier, the body of a 70-year-old woman – from which the nipples had been severed – was found in the town of Sesheke in the Western Province.

A number of other victims in the Central Province had their hands and legs chopped off.

In the Sinazeze Township in the Southern Province, two businessmen were recently arrested after being caught attempting to purchase a cadaver – along with a number of body parts – for 45,000 kwacha (roughly $882).

In Kabwe, capital of the Central Province, another man was arrested after attempting to sell his children to a witchdoctor for $58,000.

Spiritual fortification

Professor Mubanga Kashoki, a former lecturer at the University of Zambia, said ritual killings were perceived by some as acts of "spiritual fortification."

"The use of human body parts for medicinal purposes is based on the belief that it is possible to appropriate the life-force of a person through its literal consumption by another," he told AA.

"More often than not, these crimes evade the spotlight because they're largely unreported, or recorded merely as murder," Kashoki said.

He added that perpetrators usually target vulnerable members of society – such as the poor, women, children, the disabled or albinos – whose families lack the resources to obtain justice.

Lusaka businessman Julius Mebelo, for his part, believes the crimes constitute ritualistic murder.

"I wonder why most victims are young girls whose lips, tongues, genitals and other organs have been removed," he told AA. "I agree with the people who feel the missing parts of the body are used for rituals."

Such killings have already led to violent attacks on those accused of practicing ritual murder.

Police official Jere said protests had recently been staged in different parts of the country against the troubling phenomenon.

He said that in Mansa, provincial capital of Luapula Province, three people had been burnt to death by angry residents following rumors that they had hired ritual killers to abduct children and use their body parts to make magical charms to boost their wealth.

"Not only did residents kill these businessmen, but they looted all their goods and threatened to kill anyone using human blood to get rich," Jere said.

Sanaula Ibrahim, a 51-year-old Indian business owner in Luapula, narrowly escaped with his life after angry protesters looted his chain of shops and torched his home.

He had been accused of involvement in ritual murder – a charge he vehemently denies.

"I was accused of ritual killing," he said, "but I don't want to talk about it now."



Friday 07 February 2014

http://www.worldbulletin.net/news/128344/ritual-killings-on-the-rise-in-zambia

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ASFM Annual Conference, Abuja (Nigeria), 3-7 March 2014 - Management of Bodies of Victims following Disasters

The theme for the conference is "Management of Bodies of Victims following Disasters"

Forensic and Anatomical Pathologists, and allied practitioners across Africa and beyond, will share their experience on management of disaster victims.

Other relevant stakeholders on this subject will also be part of expanding knowledge and improving practice in this area.

http://www.asfmonline.org/mainpage.html

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Italy rescues more than 1,100 migrants in rafts south of Sicily

The Italian navy has rescued more than 1,100 migrants from nine large rafts in the waters south of Sicily.

Patrol helicopters identified the overcrowded rafts about 120 miles south-east of Lampedusa on Wednesday and four navy vessels participated in the rescue which ended early on Thursday. The navy gave no details about the nationalities of the migrants.

Meanwhile Moroccan authorities say emergency services have recovered the bodies of seven people who drowned after attempting to swim to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. Authorities told the state news agency that at least 200 migrants tried to swim to the enclave, which is on a peninsula jutting out from the Moroccan shore.

Italy is a major gateway into Europe for migrants, and sea arrivals more than tripled in 2013 from the previous year, fuelled by Syria's civil war and strife in the Horn of Africa.

In October, 366 Eritreans drowned in a shipwreck near the shore of the Italian island of Lampedusa, which is located about halfway between Sicily and Tunisia. More than 200, mostly Syrians, died in another shipwreck a week later.

With two Spanish enclaves on its coast, Morocco is a magnet for immigrants from all over Africa seeking jobs in Europe.

Every month, hundreds of immigrants attempt to force their way into Ceuta, near the city of Tetouan, and Melilla to the east.

Over the past two decades, Italy, Greece and the Mediterranean island of Malta have borne the brunt of migrant flows and have urged the EU to make a more robust and coordinated response.

Thursday 06 February 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/06/italy-rescues-migrants-rafts-sicily

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Eight bodies recovered after fire and rockfall at mine near Johannesburg

Rescuers recovered eight bodies and continued to search for another missing worker on Thursday after a fire and rock-fall at a Harmony Gold mine near Johannesburg, the worst accident in South Africa's mines in nearly five years.

Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu ordered an investigation into the incident at the Doornkop mine, 30km (20 miles) west of the city, after initial reports that the fire was triggered by a small earthquake on Tuesday evening.

"The situation is deeply regrettable," Shabangu said in a statement. "We must ensure that we do all we can to get to the bottom of what caused this incident in order to prevent similar occurrences in future."

It is the most serious accident in South Africa's mines since nine workers died in a rockfall at a platinum mine in July 2009.

Rescue teams battled through smoke and debris nearly a mile underground on Wednesday to reach eight miners who had managed to flee to a refuge bay equipped with a telephone and other survival gear. They were brought to the surface unharmed.

South Africa's gold mines are the deepest in the world and were ranked as some of the most dangerous during the apartheid era.

Since the end of white-minority rule in 1994, the government, unions and companies have worked to improve safety, but 112 people were still killed in 2012, the last year for which records are available.

The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and Harmony said the fire broke out on Tuesday evening after an earthquake damaged ventilation and water pipes as well as power cables.

However, NUM questioned safety standards at the mine, saying the rescued miners reported that the ventilation system in one of the refuge chambers was letting in fumes.

"It does tell us that the rescue chambers were not according to safety standards," said NUM secretary-general Frans Baleni. "We cannot just say that it is regrettable. Heads most roll should the investigation find that there was negligence."

A Harmony spokeswoman said it was possible the refuge bays had been compromised either in the earthquake or the fire that followed. An investigation by government, union and the company's officials was under way, she said.

Thursday 06 February 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/06/bodies-mine-doornkop-johannesburg

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13 dead in Ukraine train accident

At least 13 people were killed and five injured when a commuter train hit a shuttle passenger van at a level crossing in East Ukrainian region of Sumy, the regional prosecutor's press center said on Tuesday (February 4).

An official said the driver of the van which was carrying 18 passengers, ignored the warning sign of an approaching train and tried to cross the railway track when the collision happened.

"A bus that followed the route from Vorozhba to Sumy didn't stop on a red light at a railroad crossing and got hit by train from Vorozhba to Sumy. As we know now, today we have 12 people dead and six are in town of Sumy, they get medical treatment," Victor Chernyavskiy, the first deputy head of the Sumy regional administration said.

One of the injured later died in hospital, raising the number of deaths to 13. Five people, including a child, were in hospital.

Ukraine's Channel 5 showed the crash site with bodies of the van's passenger lying by the tracks.

The crash happened at about 3:35 p.m. local time near Vyry, about 25 kilometers south of Ukraine's border with Russia.

None of the train passengers was injured, the Ukrainian railways said.

The driver of the van was not killed in the accident, regional prosecutor's office said.

Road police said signals on the railroad crossing were working normally, local media reported.

Thursday 06 February 2014

http://www.solarnews.ph/news/world/2014/02/05/13-dead-in-ukraine-train-accident

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The volunteers who provided dignity for the dead following Typhoon Haiyan

The snap of latex gloves in the back of the truck is the only sound as a group of Philippine Red Cross volunteers tasked with one of the most difficult jobs in the typhoon aftermath head out to work.

They are the body retrieval team and they have just had call out.

The team of four have been undertaking this grim task since the day after the disaster. They have collected dozens of victims and although they admit it is a grisly and often traumatic job, they recognise they’re helping those survivors who are desperate to determine the fate of their loved ones. On this particular day, the team had been called to collect two bodies in the San Fernando area of the city.

As the Red Cross truck pulled up on the roadside close to where the remains were believed to be, Annalou Atterberry approached. The 27-year-old teaching assistant said she had come to Tacloban from Manila to bring basic supplies for her family in Leyte and Samar. When she arrived, she was told her 15-year-old nephew Romuel Capilos was missing.

Romuel had quit school in order to earn extra cash for his family and two days before Haiyan hit, he took up a gruelling job in a fish processing factory in Tacloban. He was working up to 21 hours a day for 1,500 pesos a month – the equivalent of about $35 US dollars.



He and between 15 and 20 of his colleagues had worked on the day of the typhoon instead of evacuating.

Annalou hitched a ride from Bongdo Julita village in Leyte, where most of her family live, and came to find Romuel. And that morning she did find him – she found his body wedged under a wall. She’d crawled over the rubble of his workplace until she caught sight of the green t-shirt and shorts she knew he had been wearing on the day of the storm.

She explained Romuel’s mother had been having a recurring dream that her son was trapped underneath something. “That’s why I came,” Annalou said. “Because she kept having the dream that he was saying ‘mum, please help me, please get me out.’ Hopefully, now we can.”

The retrieval team went to assess the scene and deemed it too dangerous. They enlisted the help of the police and their heavy-lifting equipment before heading off to continue collecting the two bodies from the initial call out. The team found them next to each other – they were the bodies of an adult woman and a baby girl, about one year old. The skilful volunteers were able to retrieve the pair and prepare them for burial with dignity, as a crowd of neighbours look on.

Francis Hidalgo, 36, has been a central member of the retrieval team since the operation began. As a father, he admits the job can be harrowing and led to nights when sleep evades him but he said: “It makes me think of my family and how I want to be with them and keep them close. But helping people gives me and all the guys energy. This is one part of being a Red Cross volunteer and I feel it is very important.”

Thursday 06 February 2014

http://www.ifrc.org/en/news-and-media/news-stories/asia-pacific/philippines/the-volunteers-who-provided-dignity-for-the-dead-following-typhoon-haiyan-64363/

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Ten killed, 39 injured as bus falls into trench at Khambatki ghat

Ten people from Porbandar in Gujarat, including seven women, were killed and 39 were injured when the private bus they were travelling in went off the Pune-Bangalore highway and fell into a trench. The driver reportedly lost control on a slope that had a sharp turn near the Khambatki tunnel in Satara district on Monday night.

Another major accident at the same spot was averted after four persons in a car, that had halted near the accident site, suffered minor injuries when the car was hit by a truck that also went out of control on the slope just few minutes after the first accident. The truck went on to hit another car and a tempo before turning turtle into a roadside trench.

About three weeks ago, nine persons had lost their lives after a heavy container had crushed a tempo at the same spot.

The bus with 47 pilgrims — most of them conservancy staffers from Porbandar Municipal Corporation — had started from Porbandar on January 10. They were on the way back after visiting Tirupati, Rameswaram and several other pilgrimage sites in South India. They took a halt at Karad in Satara and had resumed their journey at 7 pm on Monday.

Deputy Superintendent of Police Rahul Makanikar said, “About a km after the bus crossed the Khambatki tunnel, the driver reportedly lost control on the second turn of the sharp S-shaped curve, that also has a slope. The bus was going at a very high speed and turned turtle as it fell into the trench.”

The injured were rushed to nearby hospitals initially by some people who stopped by to help and the police, and later by ambulances. Ten of them, including the driver and the cleaner, were declared dead on arrival at hospitals. The injured are being treated at three hospitals in Satara town, Shirwal and Khandala-Pargaon and all are said to be out of danger. The injured also include some children. The injuries of the four persons from the second accident are minor, police said.

Mohan Chudasama, one of the survivors, said, “We could see that the driver was not able to control the bus on the slope and many of us got up from our seats. We thought the brakes had failed. We were very scared and the next thing we know was that the bus was in the trench and many of us were injured.”

Satara Regional Transport Officer Bhalchandra Kulkarni said, “The vehicle be examined and only after that will we be able to comment on whether there was any fault in the vehicle or not.” Rajesh Jethwa, another injured, said, “We were to complete our journey by February 1 but the bus broke down several times. All of us are civic conservancy staffers; some had even borrowed money for this pilgrimage.”

The bodies were being handed over to the relatives till late on Tuesday at Khandala hospital after post-mortem examination.

Thursday 06 February 2014

http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/pune/ten-killed-39-injured-as-bus-falls-into-trench-at-khambatki-ghat/

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A family's struggle to find a missing loved one in post-Haiyan Philippines

The poster shows two pictures of a smiling boy - one in a shirt, tie and trousers looking dapper, and the other in the arms of a family member. “Have you seen this boy?” the headline asks in thick black letters.

Three-year-old Tarin Sustento has not been seen since the morning of Nov. 8, 2013 when Typhoon Haiyan bore down on the central Philippines with tree-snapping winds and tsunami-like waves. Mildly autistic, Tarin cannot speak and does not know his name.

The boy is one of the 1,785 people the government has declared as missing following the storm, which killed more than 6,000.

The bungalow in Tacloban that Tarin used to share with his parents and four other relatives is now an abandoned wreck.

“Keep walking, nothing to see here,” ordered a message scrawled in capital letters on the white metal gate. Yet the remaining members of the family have not given up hope of finding him.

“We’re hopeful somebody took him in because my brother placed a lifejacket on him,” said Joanna Sustento, Tarin’s aunt and one of two known survivors in the family, as she sat in the living room of a relatives’ house in Palo, a town next to Tacloban.

Tacloban, a coastal city that bore the brunt of the storm, is slowly beginning the long and difficult task of rebuilding. For people whose loved ones remain missing, moving on is a challenge. Posters asking for information of their whereabouts still adorn the walls of churches and bus stops three months after the typhoon, locally known as Yolanda.

“Even if we gave people food, shelter and water, the psychological trauma from being separated from their families is still a big problem for them,” said Beverly Kalingag, social services officer with the Philippines Red Cross (PRC), which has been tracing missing people with support from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

LOVED ONES SWEPT AWAY

The posters of Tarin, whose father was a well-known tattoo artist, and a Facebook campaign set up by his other aunt, received many responses. Most were from people asking for money but that has not deterred Tarin’s relatives in tracking down each lead.

“A friend of my brother’s said that a doctor he knows told him that another doctor brought a three-year-old child from Tacloban to Manila about two months ago”, Sustento said.

“But we’re not sure if the child’s a boy or a girl,” added Sustento, who lost her parents, her eldest brother and his wife during a harrowing two-hour fight for survival.

On the day of the storm, strong winds woke up the whole family in the early hours. Around seven at the breakfast table they noticed water coming in through the kitchen door.

“Our house is near the coast but we have not experienced flooding before, and we never expected a storm surge,” Sustento said.

Within minutes, the water was at chest level. As they rushed out of the house, she saw a snake, she recalled.

“I freaked out but I tried to stay calm as I didn’t want to worry my father. He had a heart surgery in August and the doctors told us one more attack and that would be it,” she said.



“I looked at Tarin and even though he didn’t say anything I could see he was worried and afraid,” she added. Her sister-in-law got bitten in her thumb as they were struggling to hold on to the window grill. She sucked the poison out of her but when Sustento looked again, after helping her parents, her sister-in-law had drifted away.

Only Sustento and an unmarried brother survived the typhoon. The body of their father is yet to be found.

NEED FOR CLOSURE

The Philippines Red Cross set up a welfare desk immediately after the disaster and informed survivors they could request for help to find missing loved ones.

The ICRC, which has decades of experience in restoring family links, says it has resolved 504 cases of missing persons in two of the worst-affected provinces, Samar and Leyte.

This is done using rudimentary but effective methods such as making door-to-door enquiries and talking to neighbours and community leaders.

More than 120 cases remain open in Tacloban, including that of Tarin, according to PRC’s Kalingag. This means they have not been able to determine whether the person is dead or alive.

Sustento said Tarin’s family is exploring all options including waiting for the National Bureau of Investigations to process the dead bodies in Tacloban, of which 2,542 have yet to be identified. The government has warned it will be a costly and time-consuming task.

Bodies are still being recovered too. On the day this correspondent visited Tarin’s former home, almost three months after the storm, four fresh body bags lie on the side of the road some 100 metres away from the house.

“We are hoping that we will still find Tarin,” Joanna said. “Dead or alive. Just for closure.

Thursday 06 February 2014

http://www.trust.org/item/20140205115838-yncd7/

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Call for fast-tracking compensation for missing workers

A labour organisation yesterday demanded the missing victims of the Rana Plaza building collapse be declared dead through inspection instead of solely depending on DNA tests, so that their families can be compensated.

The families that have been waiting for closure for the last nine months have lost hope of finding the graves of their loved ones through DNA tests, as human remains are still buried at the site, the organisation said.

As the bodies recovered were decomposed beyond recognition, some families took home the wrong bodies, making it harder for DNA sampling to identify the victims, it said.

Speaking at a press briefing at Topkhana Road in Dhaka, a garment worker's organisation—Bangladesh Garment Sramik Samati— demanded a fresh search for human remains at the Rana Plaza site.

“The discovery of Obaidul's skeleton at the site, followed by around 300 bones, proves that the rescue mission at Rana Plaza site was flawed, incomplete,” said Taslima Akhter, convenor of the organisation.

The discoveries suggest that the actual death toll in the disaster is much higher than the official figure of 1,135, she said.

The families of the missing workers received little in the form of compensation, and there is confusion over the death toll as no one could confirm how many people were inside the building when it collapsed on April 24, she said.

There were three families at the event, whose DNA samples matched in the tests, but could not find their loved ones among the unidentified graves.

Thursday 06 February 2014

http://www.thedailystar.net/business/call-for-fast-tracking-compensation-for-missing-workers-10091

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Expert faults Nigeria’s disaster management policy on corpses

Nigeria’s management and preparedness for disasters have been criticised for its lack of sensitivity on handling of bodies of victims as well as the communities affected following disasters. Dr Uwom Eze, a Forensic Pathologist at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, said what would be needed to close this gap was going to be the thrust of the African Society of Forensic Medicine (ASFM) Annual Forensic Conference early in March, 2014, at Abuja.

The annual conference, with the theme; “Management of Bodies of Victims Following Disasters” is to have in attendance, forensic and anatomical pathologists, medical laboratory and mortuary workers, law enforcement agencies, coroners, legal practitioners, NEMA officials, Red Cross and other stakeholders in disaster management.

Eze, saying that disasters were unfortunately inevitable, declared that often times the mental and psychological health issues that affected the community where the disaster occurred were neglected.

The expert who emphasised that there were so many medico-legal issues that need to be considered in relationship with such incidences, said in restoring sanity after disasters, government needed to first of all identify those who were involved.

“Bodies of victims are usually neglected. People are admonished to forget the dead but the dead is never dead because they leave traces of memory, life and consequences for their dependants and for their communities. That is why we are focusing on the management of bodies of victims”.

“Often we do mass burial and this may imply that the family of the missing may never get to know whether the person is actually dead; they never get to give the person appropriate burial and that is a perpetual mental and psychological torture for all people who are involved.

“The affected communities never come to closure and this distorts community health.

“Furthermore death certificates cannot be issued for such victims that were not identified, so you could imagine families, children and wives who depend on them will not be able to claim their property and investments in formal institutions.

“I reckon there is huge fortune, perhaps running into billions of Naira in Nigeria banks that may never be accessed by families of deceased following disasters. If the right processes and procedures were followed, the event could be less traumatic on the families and friends of the deceased and their dignity and rights preserved even in death.”

Eze said that the principles of forensic medicine, a medico-legal practice and an investigative aspect of medicine, if applied in disasters could also help unravel its cause.

According to him: “Some signs and features we could see on bodies of victims may be able to tell us whether the disaster is really an accident or an event that appeared to be an accident or may even be staged to be an accident. “For example, the evidences pieced together can tell if there was an explosion inside the plane, for example, or if it crashed due to some other mechanisms. The nature and circumstance of each incident may be seen through peculiar features on the bodies of victims.

“Imagine you are investigating a crash and a known terrorist is identified, it may imply there may have been some terrorist’s activities resulting in the crash and it may help direct the investigation in appropriate circumstance. So the bodies are not just bodies that are dead, they are very important in determining the cause of death and circumstance of event.

“So there is a lot of prevention initiatives that could come from investigating bodies of victims, especially in ensuring emergency preparedness.”

Eze acknowledging that Nigeria had experienced unprecedented disasters both man-made and natural disasters, noted that many of the bodies in these incidences were not properly investigated and managed.

“In Nigeria, every thing is lumped under one headline, and the problem is we do not usually go into details. Unfortunately what has not been carefully studied and addressed will keep repeating itself and we continue to look in the wrong direction. This is our sad story but it does not have to remain that way. The forthcoming pan-African Forensic Conference will attempt to address these issues with some relevant stakeholders in Nigeria and across Africa,” he concluded.

Thursday 06 February 2014

http://www.tribune.com.ng/news2013/index.php/en/health-news/item/32682-expert-faults-nigeria%E2%80%99s-disaster-management-policy-on-corpses.html

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The 2004 Morecambe Bay cockling tragedy

Retired police chief Mick Gradwell led the probe into the 2004 cockling disaster in which 23 Chinese cocklers lost their lives. Operation Lund, as the investigation was called, was an enormously complex prosecution involving more than 1.5million pages of evidence. The trail eventually led to a Chinese gangmaster being found guilty of 21 counts of manslaughter and jailed for 14 years in March 2006. Reporter Michelle Blade spoke to Mick about the events of that fateful night and the ensuing police investigation.

Over an illustrious 30 year career, Mick Gradwell has worked on a series of high profile police investigations, including the Sophie Lancaster murder enquiry, the Haut de la Garenne child abuse investigation and the Morecambe Bay cockle pickers tragedy.

But in 2004, as senior investigating officer for Lancashire Constabulary, Mick Gradwell was thrown into the murky world of Snakehead gangs, and international people trafficking when 23 Chinese cockle pickers drowned in the bay.

Mick said: “I’m a Lancashire lad, used to dealing with crimes in Lancashire, not international organised crime gangs and human trafficking - its not what you expect, not on the landscaped shores of Morecambe bay.

“Until then I had investigated domestic murders, one punch murders, bad on bad murders.

“I was thrown into areas of the shellfish industry I didn’t know about. I didn’t know a cockle from a mussel. I didn’t know about safety issues within the industry, or Snakehead gangs.”

Mick was informed about the disaster the morning after the rescue operation.

As daylight came, eight bodies had been washed ashore - then Mick had another call saying the body count had gone up to 14.

Over time it became known that 23 people had died.

Mick said: “The crime scene was 120 square miles, there were vehicles and bodies and evidence in Morecambe, Liverpool and elsewhere.

“You get used to seeing a lot of horror and gore but seeing that many bodies who looked like they could wake up at some point was shocking.

“The investigation kicked off. We needed to find out where the cockles were going and who was organising the human trafficking.”

Police discovered how money was filtered down to 12 accounts in China from sub accounts in London.

The people who owned the accounts in China made millions.

But Fujian province, where the Chinese cocklers hailed from was one of the poorest places in the world.

Mick said: “Most of the family houses were just shacks. They are some of the poorest people in the world and they were grafting to send money back to their families.

“Most of them were farmers who were quite well qualified but had to get down in the dirt to raise money. The gangmasters tried to abuse people like that.

“One of the family members needed to go abroad to find work. They would have to pay £15-£20,000 to the Snakehead gang to get trafficked, in this case the UK. A large number of Chinese managed to illegally get into Britain, either on the back of a van or a plane.

“They would produce their passport and apply for asylum and told to come back in two weeks whilst their application was processed.

“The vast majority never went back. In 2003 cockles in the EU got the lurgy and became unfit for human consumption. The value of cockles increased greatly.

“Lin Mu Yung started the cockling enterprise which did really well.

“His English girlfriend didn’t speak Mandarin but looked after the illegal immigrants.

“They kitted the cocklers out with equipment and made sure they were looked after and safe. Lin Liang Ren was the cousin of Lin Mu Yung and was a far more nastier business manager and accountant.

“He started to cut things down and provided cheap waterproofs and bought eight year old Toyota Previa vehicles that wouldn’t get stuck in quicksand.

“There was a double tide on February 5.

“On the evening he sent 20 people out and they would two thirds fill a HGV. He would then leave the workers on the beach and return for the morning tide when they would fill up the rest of the HGV.

“When they set off from Liverpool one of the vehicles broke down and 35 people didn’t set off.

“If they had done, there would have been more deaths.

“It was the wrong end of the tide and the worst time you could have gone out cockling.

“Local cocklers were coming in and told the Chinese cocklers not to go out but because of the language differences they didn’t understand.

“A flat pick-up got stuck and was wiped out and it was quite clear he (Lin Liang Ren) had sent them out too late. By 7pm they were already goosed and it was all going wrong.
Lin Liang Ren rang his cousin and asked to be taken out of the area.

“Some of the 35 people out in the bay made their way back on foot to the car park.

“Lin Mu Yung’s girlfriend decided to ring the coastguard and kicked off the rescue.

“By this time it was way too late, 9.15pm. At 9.20pm one of the cocklers called 999 and you can hear them drowning.

“Only one guy, Li Hua, was saved at Priest Skear. He is still in witness protection.

“Lin Liang Ren never admitted anything - we had to prove it by identifying DNA, fingerprints, and using telephony analysis and forensic analysis.

“We had to seize the rent books and documents and prove he was the guy paying the money.

“We had to prove he was the guy who bought the vehicles.

“His fingerprints were on the credit card receipts used to buy equipment.

“The European cocklers said that he was the man in charge.

“There were thousands of telephone calls and the forged fishing permits had links to human trafficking.

“The trial was over six months long because he would never admit to anything.

“It was a huge investigation to send people to China to identify the deceased, and there were language differences and huge forensic accounting issues. It was a very tragic job but we had to offer justice to those who died.

“No matter what we did we were never going to bring a satisfactory conclusion to the job because all the families want is their loved one.

“It isn’t just a bit of paperwork and we do become aware of the personal tragedy and its effects.

“It was such a terrible tragedy, such a needless waste of life.”

Operation Lund won Britain’s top criminal justice award, the Justice Shield, in 2006.

The cockle pickers trial was one of the most complex ever staged in Lancashire.

Survivors who disappeared after the tragedy had to be tracked down, statements proved difficult to obtain because of language barriers and witnesses being fearful of gang reprisals and vast quantities of evidence had to be presented to the court.

New technology was introduced during the trial to provide the jury with location footage and video and audio evidence – with translations where appropriate.

In total, 23 lives were cruelly wasted in Morecambe Bay that night.

Nineteen of those who died were men, four were women, and all but one of them had children.

Two of the cocklers who were not found at the time, were later pronounced dead.

The skull of one of them, Liu Qin, was found eight years later. Their 13-year-old son was left orphaned.

The remains of Dong Xin Wu have never been found. One of the cocklers, Li Hua, made it on to a raised area of rocky sand called Priest Skear and was spotted by a helicopter crew and was picked up by the emergency services.

Li Hua was the only person to be rescued.

Chinese detectives and British police worked for three months after the tragedy to identify the victims.

They used post-mortem photographs and some of the cocklers’ meagre possessions found either on their bodies or on the foreshore. Investigating officers met with families in China and compared DNA samples from relatives.

All of the 23 people who perished were eventually named in May 2004.

When some of the cocklers’ bodies were returned to China, the Chinese government compounded the families’ grief and tried to teach them a callous lesson by getting soldiers to leave the coffins in the street. The families also had to contend with the snakehead gangleaders to whom they owed tens of thousands of pounds.

Thursday 06 February 2014

http://www.thevisitor.co.uk/news/local/slideshow-morecambe-bay-cockling-tragedy-who-were-the-victims-1-6417639

http://www.thevisitor.co.uk/news/morecambe-bay-cockling-tragedy-evil-world-of-snakehead-gangs-1-6417865

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Argentina's forensic anthropology is finding 'disappeared ones'

In the decades since a brutal military crackdown in Argentina in the late 1970s, when thousands of disappearances occurred, the country has been driven by activist pressure to become a global leader in forensic anthropology, a field that holds lessons for other post-conflict countries trying to identify missing people, say experts.

“The trauma of disappearance is universal - not to know if your loved one is alive or dead, not to have a grave - that grief is universal for families everywhere,” said Luis Fondebrinder, a forensic anthropologist with the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF), an NGO based in Buenos Aires, the capital, that investigates large-scale disappearances.

Forensic anthropology - combining the sciences of archaeology and human biology to identify human remains in criminal investigations - has been used in Argentina to locate mass burial sites in the provinces of Buenos Aires, Tucuman, and Cordoba.

At the urging of human rights groups, Argentina was the first country to employ the technique on a large scale to investigate human rights abuses under a military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983, in what became known as the “Dirty War”. Scientists have so far exhumed and identified around 600 of thousands of skeletons, using DNA samples provided by the families of missing persons.

“Enforced disappearances are a denial of the person who disappeared... it is a human rights violation that affects not only the rights of the person who disappeared, but also the rights of their relatives,” Ariel Dulitzky, the chair of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) in the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) told IRIN. The UN has stressed the importance of forensic anthropology in helping citizens fight such disappearances.

Worldwide, nearly 54,000 unsolved cases have been submitted to the WGEID since its inception in 1980, according to the International Coalition Against Enforced Disappearances (ICAED), a global network of 50 NGOs that researches incidents and works to raise awareness of this crime.

Human rights groups say many cases go unreported because families feel that “if investigated… the information might be used against them, and that the same disappearance might happen to any [other] member of the family,” said Candy Diez, a research and documentation officer with the Asia Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD), a network of more than 10 human rights groups based in the capital of the Philippines, Manila. The organization says there are at least 7,400 unsolved disappearances in Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Nepal, Timor-Leste, Indonesia, Thailand and Bangladesh.

“Silence and fear shroud enforced disappearances. In several cases, individuals who reported a disappearance were themselves detained,” said a 2013 paper on Syria by the UN OHCHR, noting that the missing include doctors suspected of treating anti-government protesters.

A story only bones can tell

Exhuming and identifying the dead can take anywhere from weeks to years, depending on a government's willingness to cooperate, the type of records kept by alleged perpetrators, the geographic location of bodies, and obtaining DNA samples - as well as the laboratory capacity to analyze them - according to WGEID and the Argentine EAAF.

The organizations use government files to identify the mass graves closest to where a person was last seen, and archaeological techniques to analyze the soil to detect past activity at suspected burial sites, before locating and digging up remains.

Information from surviving family members is key. “You need circumstantial information, how the person disappeared, and also physical and biological information, including any bone fractures, how were the teeth, etc.,” said Fondebrinder, who added that many diseases can alter bones. Scientists then construct a biological profile based on the remains, which are often skeletal, using bone size and shape to estimate a person’s age, sex, and stature.

The story of a person's life helps to find them in death, say forensic anthropologists. “Science is not one hundred percent, usually we say it is the person 'beyond reasonable doubt',” Fondebrinder said. “Only with DNA [can we know the percentage of accuracy of our identification efforts]. Usually you say, ‘Yes, it is identified, or no [it is not]’.”

The bones can also tell how the person died, according to EAAF. The Simon Fraser University (SFU) Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology based in Vancouver, Canada, notes that if the person was hit with a blunt object, the skull could shatter or bones might fracture; sharp objects often make puncture marks, and a gunshot or knife wound can cause deep trauma in a small area.

The challenges of finding remains

Finding bones is not always straightforward, especially in cases where the alleged perpetrators have destroyed bodies or buried them in mass graves to cover up human rights violations, said EAAF, which searches for people on the official Argentine government list of some 10,000 registered as missing, but has only identified 600.

The UN WGEID reports resolving around 10,000 disappearances worldwide since it was founded in 1980, with 45,000 cases remaining open to date. “Sometimes you can only find small pieces of bones, or else there are hundreds or thousands of remains all mixed up,” said Dulitzky.

The Working Group's progress in resolving disappearances often depends on government cooperation, as forensic anthropology is a legal investigation that requires official consent. Without state cooperation, it can be next to impossible to find a missing person.

“Even where courts are willing and make findings against the police, [the] army or others, there is no effective remedy when the authorities refuse to cooperate,” said Brad Adams, in the Asia Division of Human Rights Watch.

While 93 of the 193 UN member countries have signed the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, the UN lists only 42 that have passed national legislation to implement it.

Closing the circle of grief

Knowing what happened is fundamental if families are to have closure, said many forensic anthropologists IRIN interviewed in Argentina, who had often entered the profession because their parents had lost loved ones during the period of military rule.

“Many relatives, even if they know they will not be able to find the body, they want to know how the person was killed, when, and by whom,” said Dulitzky.

In Argentina, the trials of alleged perpetrators were broadcast. The government also made a public apology to the families of those who had disappeared, and paid reparations of US$200,000 per family. “[It] is one of the countries in the world that has achieved much in terms of finding the truth, seeking justice, and [recording the] memory [of the collective trauma],” said Fondebrinder.

But with only .06 percent of all officially recorded disappearances in Argentina solved, most of the families are still waiting for scientists to examine and identify the thousands of bone fragments stored in the EAAF laboratory.

Snapshots of the missing

Sri Lanka - The UN registered 5,676 persons missing in the civil war, 1984-2009.
Nepal - an estimated 5,000 people disappeared during the 10-year conflict between Maoists and the government that ended in 2006 .
Colombia - The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), a US government-funded identification programme, says human rights watchdogs estimate between 3,000 and 15,000 people have disappeared in internal armed conflict since the mid-1960s.
Syria - Since March 2011, increasing numbers of people have reported missing family members, abducted by pro-government militias from hospitals, homes, and road checkpoints, the UN said.

Wednesday 05 February 2014

http://www.irinnews.org/report/99593/argentina-s-forensic-anthropology-is-finding-disappeared-ones

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Disappearances in Colombia: living in the throes of uncertainty

More than 63,800 people have been officially reported missing in Colombia. This situation has a drastic effect on whole families who are forced to live with nagging doubts as to the fate of their loved ones.

For Rubiela* 8 February was a red-letter day, as it marked the end of the uncertainty which had kept her on tenterhooks ever since her son Jáder had disappeared three years earlier. “We paid tribute to him and buried him in the local cemetery. At last my soul is at peace, as my son is resting where he belongs”.

The tragedy which Rubiela experienced is one facing hundreds of families in Putumayo, a department in south-western Colombia, on the borders with Ecuador and Peru. “At least 1,150 disappearances directly related to the conflict hare are known to have occurred” says Rubén Darío Pinzón, who works for the ICRC’s Puerto Asís office and whose duties include that of assisting the families of the missing.

“My son was here in the municipal cemetery”

On 24 December 2009, when he was 16, Jáder decided to join an armed group. He told his mum that he was going to work to earn some money and that he would be back in January in order to continue his education. That was the last time that she saw him alive.

“Scarcely 20 days had gone by when people started to talk about a shelling. A little later they said that my son had been one of the victims”, says Rubiela. “By the time I got to Puerto Asís, they had already buried him without knowing exactly who he was”.

Although some photographs in the possession of the authorities made Rubiela feel sure that her son was among the dead, two lost ADN samples and the slow response of the administrative authorities prolonged her agony. “I was nearly desperate. So much suspense was driving me crazy. Now I know where my boy is. If it had not been for the Red Cross, I would still have been looking for him”.

In Colombia, the ICRC is working to alleviate the suffering of missing persons’ families, by being attentive to their needs and encouraging a suitable response from the authorities. To this end, it endeavours to locate the missing and to prevent future disappearances by training the authorities in proper graveyard management (marking of areas and protecting data on unidentified bodies), holding workshops on the registration of missing persons and providing information about standards and laws.

In addition, the ICRC offers guidance and advice to families and authorities about golden rules and procedures when searching for and registering missing persons and it fosters coordination among institutions. It also instructs the parties to the conflict and other armed groups about the rules prohibiting the concealment of information regarding missing persons. Puerto Asís, Putumayo, Colombia. Puerto Asís, Putumayo, Colombia. After years of anguished searching Rubiela managed to bury her son Jáder.

“My son never turned up”

“The last time he called us, my son Arcesio said that he was coming to see us” says Ancízar Osorio in a faltering voice, after eight years of not knowing where his son is. One month after his disappearance, the Osorio family went to Chocó to begin their search which included, among other steps, the exhumation and irregular reburial by a gravedigger, without the authorities’ backing, of a body which they thought to be that of their son. Eight years later forensic science proved that this was not so.

After looking at photographs in the possession of the National Directorate of Prosecution Services, Ancízar and his family are now certain that, after Arcesio died, he was taken to the cemetery at Itsmina where, however, it has proved impossible to find the place where the mortal remains of the young man from Putumayo lie.

In Colombia, many people are buried anonymously in cemeteries throughout the country, a situation which prolongs their relatives’ uncertainty and searches. The ICRC, being aware of this reality, is working to improve the protection and identification of mortal remains.

Puerto Asís, Putumayo, Colombia. Luz Mary travelled from Putumayo to Santa Marta, on the other side of the country, to receive the mortal remains of her brother Rodolfo.

“Fear left me speechless”

On 18 February last year, Luz Mary travelled to Santa Marta, the capital of the coastal department of Magdalena, to receive the mortal remains of her brother Rodolfo. When she arrived in the town she was sad in the knowledge that she would never see him alive again, yet serene because she had found his body seven years after he had disappeared.

Luz Mary considers herself lucky. Unlike many families who are still tirelessly searching for their loved ones, her case was solved quickly with few problems. “In 2012 I was informed that my brother’s remains were in Santa Marta (Magdalena). The Red Cross helped me with transport and travel expenses so that I could go and collect them”.

“In Colombia there are fathers, mothers, siblings, spouses, children, men and women who search desperately day after day for their missing relatives” explains Rubén Darío Pinzón, from the ICRC. “Many families face the harsh reality of uncertainty, of not knowing for years what has happened to people they love”.

Wednesday 05 February 2014

http://www.globalpost.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/gp3_slideshow_large/colombia_farc_missing_2012_08_30.jpg

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Police collect DNA samples of kin of dead to identify bodies

Close to a week after an accident on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad Highway left eight people dead and 14 injured, DNA samples of the kin of the deceased have been taken and will be sent to JJ Hospital to identify the dead, the police said.

Three vehicles were gutted after a collision between a diesel tanker and luxury bus on the highway, 12 km from Manor village.

“At this point, it is impossible to identify bodies. The families submitted claims with us last week. Accordingly, we took DNA samples from immediate family members and will send these to JJ Hospital. Once the reports from the forensic department there are received, we will hand over the bodies,” said Assistant Police Inspector Meghana Burande, Manor police station.

At 1.30 am on Wednesday, January 29, a diesel tanker hired by BPCL and travelling from Wadala to Hazira in Gujarat broke down in the middle of the road after ramming into a vehicle moving ahead of it,

The luxury bus, which was travelling to Ahmedabad from Pune rammed straight into the stationary tanker, the police said. A Hyundai Verna car speeding behind also rammed into the bus. The three persons inside the car escaped with minor injuries. In the blaze that followed due to fuel leak, the bus driver, Shaukat Mulani (36), the second driver and six passengers were burnt alive, the police said. Both Siddiqui and Shah fled after the accident and were arrested a few hours later.

While one of the passengers was identified by a silver locket he wore around his neck, the other seven deceased remain unidentified, the police said.

Doctors and local police said bodies had been completely charred, with no features discernible. The bodies were later sent to JJ Hospital in Mumbai for a forensic examination.

Tuesday 04 February 2014

http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/police-collect-dna-samples-of-kin-of-dead-to-identify-bodies/

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Search for victims delayed as Indonesia’s Mt Sinabung spews ash into the sky

A new eruption of ash and steam from Indonesia's Mt. Sinabung has put on hold a search for victims of the Saturday's major eruption that has claimed 16 lives.

The volcano erupted at around 10:30 a.m. local time on Saturday, February 1st, just a day after local residents who were previously evacuated due to the eruptions and pyroclastic flows were told that they could return to their homes. This fast-moving flow of hot ash and gas quickly swept down the mountainside, traveling roughly five kilometres away from the crater. It was followed by two more flows over the next hour.

According to reports, search parties checking villages on the volcano slopes recovered 14 bodies, along with three people who had suffered burns. The death toll had risen to 16 on Sunday when another body was discovered and one of the burn victims died of their injuries. All of the victims were from the village of Suka Meriah, which is roughly three kilometres from the volcano. Evacuation zones had stretched out to well beyond that range over the past few weeks, due to the volcano's increased activity. It's still unclear whether those restrictions were lifted prior to the weekend eruption, or if those on the mountainside had simply violated the restrictions put on travel in the area.

A resident runs to escape the billowing ash cloud engulfing their village.Search efforts for victims resumed on Monday, since three people are apparently still missing from the eruption on Saturday. Those efforts had to be delayed, though, when the volcano spewed out another blast of ash and gas, reaching 2.5 kilometres into the sky. This mixture of burning hot ash and poisonous gas would not only have made searching difficult simply due to obscuring everything in the area, but with temperatures reaching several hundred degrees and combined with a mix of poisonous gases, venturing into the area could have been deadly. Authorities were to decide later on Monday if the search would be called off permanently.

At the other end of the island nation, the disaster mitigation agency raised the alert level on Mount Kelud of East Java to level 2, according to state-run Antara News, and there are now around 20 volcanoes in Indonesia that are currently on alert status. The alert statuses of most of the volcanoes are simply to note a level of activity above normal. Mt. Sinabung is at the highest alert level: level 3.

Today, a magnitude 6.1 earthquake shook the sea floor near Kepulauan Barat Daya, and was followed by several aftershocks. These may be unrelated to the volcanic activity, but eruptions are often associated with tremors and earthquakes, as magma shifts under the ground.

Tuesday 04 February 2014

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/geekquinox/search-victims-delayed-indonesia-mt-sinabung-spews-ash-012625624.html

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