Cause of fatal Mali air crash still a mystery

Investigators probing the crash of an Air Algerie flight in Mali that killed 116 people in July said on Saturday there was no obvious lead yet and all possibilities, including terrorism, were being explored.

Flight AH5017, a McDonnell Douglas 83 jet that had taken off on July 24 from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso bound for Algiers, crashed in the Mali desert after its pilots asked to turn back as bad weather struck.

"At the moment... nothing is telling us that we can rule out or confirm terrorism. We are not favouring any line of inquiry," Bernard Boudaille, of France's Bureau of Investigations and Analyses (BEA) air safety agency, told reporters in the Malian capital Bamako.

France bore the brunt of the tragedy, with nearly half of the victims its citizens. Other passengers came from Burkina Faso, Lebanon, Algeria, Spain, Canada, Germany and Luxembourg.

Presenting the initial report into a probe into the tragedy, Boudaille and the head of Mali's civil aviation accident commission, N'Faly Cisse, said the crew was experienced and not hampered by fatigue, and prepared to deal with difficult weather.

Boudaille said the plane's auto-pilot had been disconnected shortly before the crash, but it was unclear if this had been deliberate or the result of an accident as the cockpit voice recording has so far proved unusable.

The black box flight recorder, which was working, shows that the aircraft suffered a "sudden drop" after a "slowdown of its engines" at cruising altitude, he told the news conference.

Boudaille said the weather conditions at the time of the crash "can be considered normal".

The aircraft took "avoidance manoeuvres" to fly around clouds "that could cause severe turbulence and icing", he said.

But he added that the flight recorder showed no signs of turbulence and "there is nothing yet that can prove or disprove the hypothesis of icing" that would have caused the accident.

Vertical drop

Remi Jouty, the head of the BEA, told reporters in August that it seemed likely that the plane had broken up on impact instead of in the air. He said the jet had fallen out of the sky vertically at an extremely high speed and was apparently intact when it hit the ground. "When we look at the trajectory, this leads us to believe that the plane did not break up into several pieces while in flight. This does not exclude that damage was caused during the flight," he said.

"I don't think we can at this point exclude the possibility of a deliberate act but we cannot say more for the moment," he said. The flight recorder showed it took only around a second for the plane to fall from its last recorded altitude of around 500 metres, or 1,600 feet, to the ground of the Malian desert, investigators found.

Authorities initially thought 118 passengers and crew had died in the disaster but it later emerged that two people did not board the plane. International investigators toiled at the site in highly inhospitable conditions and extreme heat for a week after the crash, taking around 1,000 samples of DNA from the site.

Forensic experts had to resort to using the DNA samples to identify the dead, because the power of the impact shattered the bodies of those on board and scattered debris from the plane over a wide area.

The accident was the third crash worldwide in the space of just eight days, capping a disastrous week for the aviation industry. On July 17, a Malaysia Airlines plane was shot down in restive eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.

And a Taiwanese aircraft crashed in torrential rain in Taiwan on July 23, killing 48.

Saturday 20 September 2014

http://www.expatica.com/fr/news/french-news/cause-of-fatal-mali-air-crash-still-a-mystery-probe_302563.html

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Thousands still missing from Bosnia war

Bosnia-Herzegovina is still dealing with the dilemma of thousands of people filed as missing from the Bosnian war in the 1990s, Press TV reports.

According to officials, there are still more than 8,000 missing people from the war that ended 20 years ago, while 22,000 bodies have been exhumed and identified until now.

“After the war in our country, more than 30,000 people were missing due to the numerous crimes committed here and so far we have exhumed and identified around 22,000 people,” Lejla Cengic of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) told the Press TV correspondent in Sarajevo.

According to the ICMP, information at hand regarding the mass graves usually proves to be incorrect, and only about 15 percent of it is reliable.

“A large number of missing people, around 3,000 of them, still have not been identified. Their remains are at 11 different morgues in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We are currently in search of 8,000 missing people and at the moment we do not have the information of where the remains are hidden,” Cengic added.

Their identities have not been determined by DNA analysis due to reasons such as lack of blood samples to compare bone samples with, or the fact that the remains are so damaged that the isolation of DNA is impossible.

At the start of the Bosnian war in 1992, Srebrenica was a mainly Muslim town in a Serb-held part of Bosnia. On July 11, 1995, Bosnian Serb forces overran Srebrenica, separated women and children from men, and then systematically murdered the men in mass executions. Mass graves were later found in the area.

More than 8,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred in Srebrenica at the hands of Bosnian Serb forces.

Saturday 20 September 2014

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/09/20/379314/thousands-still-missing-from-bosnia-war/

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Lagos church disaster: 10 South African victims identified

Ten of the South African citizens killed in the building collapse at the Synagogue Church of All Nations in Nigeria have been positively identified, the government said on Thursday.

A South African assessment team which travelled to the West African country on Wednesday said the 10 bodies were identified through reference to identity documents found in their possession.

The families of the deceased had been notified and social workers had been deployed to assist them, the government said.

Officials were maintaining contact with relatives of those who were visiting the church and had asked them to send photographs of their relatives which could be used for identification purposes.

“Since the appeal made yesterday (on Wednesday ) for family members to send photographs of their affected loved ones to the operations centre at dirco, we have received an overwhelmingly positive response and we appreciate this gesture of co-operation,” government said in a statement.

“We have forwarded the pictures to the South African consulate in Nigeria and the team on the ground in Lagos is making use of the pictures in the process of identifying those of our fallen compatriots who can still be identified through the use of photographs.

“We understand that some of the bodies may take a while to be positively identified due to the nature and extent of the calamity.”

A guest house belonging to the church, led by self-styled faith healer TB Joshua, collapsed and was reduced to rubble on Friday.

The assessment team has established that 349 South Africans were in Lagos on matters connected to the church when the disaster occurred.

Some of the survivors of the incident had arrived back in South Africa.

The assessment team was making arrangements for the treatment and return of those who were injured in the disaster.

“The team will also work with authorities on the process of the repatriation of the mortal remains of deceased South Africans,” said government, adding that it would ensure that all the country's citizens were accounted for.

“The SA high commissioner and the consul-general have been working with the leadership of the church and other authorities, visiting the scene, going to hospitals and mortuaries in an effort to provide assistance to all our affected citizens,” said the government.

A 24-hour operations centre had also set up at the department of international relations and co-operation to relay information from Nigeria to the families as well as to receive information from the families and to share such information with the team on the ground in Lagos.

Friday 19 September 2014

http://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/lagos-disaster-10-sa-victims-identified-1.1753221#.VBxXvxrF8Ro

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225 victims of downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 identified

Forensic experts have identified 225 victims of downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, with 14 new names released to families, Dutch authorities said today.

"Among the 14 victims, seven were Dutch and seven were of other nationalities," the justice ministry said in a statement, adding that the other nationalities would not be released at the request of their embassies.

The Boeing 777 exploded over Eastern Ukraine on 17 July, killing all 298 on board.

193 of the passengers were Dutch.

The findings of an initial report by a team of Dutch air crash investigators appears to back-up claims that the plane was hit by an anti-aircraft missile.

Ukraine has accused separatists of shooting it down with a surface-to-air BUK missile supplied by Russia - a charge Moscow denies.

Last month forensics experts suspended their search for bodies due to clashes between Eastern Ukraine and the pro-Russian rebels near the crash site northeast of Donetsk.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said today it was still "too dangerous" for investigators to visit the site, and that the Dutch investigators left in Ukraine would return to the Netherlands.

Friday 19 September 2014

http://www.rte.ie/news/2014/0919/645012-mh17/

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Nigeria: Another 17 South Africans presumed dead after church collapse

The South African High Commissioner to Nigeria, Lulu Mnguni, has told that the death toll from the collapse in Lagos has risen to 84.

President Jacob Zuma initially announced that 67 South Africans were crushed to death when a residential building owned by TB Joshua's popular church collapsed a week ago.

Late last night, government said 17 South Africans are either dead or missing following the collapse.

Government confirmed that 349 South Africans were in Nigeria to hear Joshua preach.

A total of 265 of them have been found alive.

It’s also been confirmed that an assessment team from South Africa has now touched down in Lagos and will help with coordination.

Government has thanked the families of those still missing for sending photographs to help identify bodies where possible.

Arrangements are being made to bring the bodies home.

Meanwhile, the church maintains the collapse was the result of some kind of an attack and has described those who died as martyrs.

Questions have been asked about the state of the hostel where followers of the controversial pastor stayed.

Friday 19 September 2014

http://ewn.co.za/2014/09/19/Nigeria-collapse-17-South-Africans-still-missing

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70 dead in Nigeria after church building collapses

70 bodies have been recovered from the rubble of a collapsed church building in Lagos, however, according to Nigerian officials, they remain unidentified.

South African President Jacob Zuma said last night that at least 67 of his compatriots had died in Friday's accident at the Synagogue Church of All Nations in Nigeria, describing it as one of the worst tragedies in his country's recent history.

Nigeria's National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), however, said it was too early to know how many South Africans had been killed in the collapse.

Speaking to Reuters news agency NEMA spokesman Ibrahim Farinloye said: "The president (Zuma) is not in Nigeria. We are working on what we have.

"The church management up until now has not estimated or given us any list of people trapped, so we are just working on blind guesswork until we get to the last rubble."

Mr. Farinloye added that 131 people had been rescued alive.

The collapse occurred when three extra stories were being added to the existing two of a guest house of the church compound, where visitors from abroad come to stay.

The Lagos Pentecostal church is led by the charismatic T.B. Joshua, whose followers describe him as a prophet.

The church attracts a global following of Christians who believe Joshua is able to perform miracles, including curing the ill and raising the dead from the grave.

The regular influx of visitors from abroad for the church's services, which can last up to a week, creates demand for accommodation that the church's own guest house has been unable to meet, and often spills over into local hotels.

Several African leaders have travelled to Nigeria to meet with spiritual healer Joshua, including former Malawian President Joyce Banda and Julius Malema, the leader of South Africa's ultra-leftist opposition Economic Freedom Fighters.

Church members initially prevented emergency officials from participating in the rescue, making it difficult to establish death and injury tolls.

South Africa described the search and rescue operation as "very fluid", but defended its count of 67 dead, saying it was based on records and information on the ground from five tour groups that had arranged for South African worshippers to go to Lagos.

"This number is based on credible information," South African foreign ministry spokesman Clayson Monyela said.

Last night Zuma told the SABC national broadcaster that an unknown number of South Africans were "not yet accounted for" and that the nation needed to "grieve together".

Spokesman Mac Maharaj later said the government believed around 300 South Africans from four to five groups were visiting the church on Friday but it was not clear how many were on the spot when the building collapsed.

"It's a very popular church with South Africans," Maharaj said.

South Africa and Nigeria share strong business and diplomatic ties but have had occasional quarrels in the past, notably when South Africa deported 125 Nigerians in 2012 over suspicions their yellow fever certificates were fake.

Nigeria responded by briefly refusing South African residents entry and branding the country xenophobic.

Nigeria is Africa's most populous nation and overtook South Africa as the continent's largest economy this year, heightening rivalry between the two countries.

Wednesday 17 September 2014

http://www.rte.ie/news/2014/0917/644494-nigeria-building-collapse/

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Five more Jonestown mass suicide victims identified among ashes found in Delaware

Names associated with unclaimed cremains found last month at a Dover, Del., funeral home, which include victims of the 1978 Peoples Temple mass suicide-murder in Jonestown, Guyana, were released to the public Monday.

Delaware's Division of Forensic Science said it was releasing the names in hopes of returning the cremated remains to families. The remains were found this summer in a shuttered Minus Funeral Home, and among those found were the 1978 victims of the massacre in which 911 died.

The remains of those killed in Jonestown were identified by officials as: Ottie Mese Guy, Katherine M. Domineck, Tony Walker, Irene Mason and Ruth Atkins.

The remains that were not associated with Jonestown were thought to be of people local to Delaware.

So far, the remains of five have been reunited with surviving family, according to Delaware officials. They include Jonestown victims Irra Johnson, Wanda King, Maud Perkins, and Mary Rodgers, and one deceased person who was not a Jonestown victim.

The work to identify and transfer the remains was through research by state officials. Expertise to identify Jonestown victims came from the help of "the Jonestown Institute at San Diego State University, the California Historical Society and other Jonestown survivors but have been unable to locate any additional family members," according to state officials in a written statement issued Monday.

The cremated remains of 38 people were found at the former funeral home in August by state officials responding to a request to check the property after containers were discovered.

Delaware officials responded in August to a request to check the former funeral home in a downtown Dover neighborhood after containers were discovered.

Seven containers of cremated remains discovered at the funeral home remain unidentified, Delaware officials said Monday.

The cremated remains of nine of the dead turned up in storage at a defunct funeral home in Dover, Delaware more than 30 years after the tragic mass suicide that took the lives of 911 Bay Area residents at Jonestown, in Guyana. The hundreds of members of the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project cult headed by preacher Jim Jones died in the mass murder and suicide on Nov. 18, 1978. Jones ordered his followers to drink grape-flavored punch that turned out to be laced with cyanide. Others died after being shot by guards loyal to Jones.

The reason they ended up there is because all the bodies of the dead originally arrived back in the U.S. at Dover Air Force Base, which is home to the nation's largest military mortuary, as the AP reports. These nine unclaimed cremains were clearly lost in the shuffle, and were among 38 containers of remains discovered at the former funeral home this week.

At the time, in November 1978, after multiple cemeteries refused to accept the remains of those unclaimed and/or unidentified victims (many of the bodies that came back to the States were badly decomposed), Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland accepted 406 of the bodies, many of them children. A memorial to the victims was unveiled there in 2008.

The remains [found in Delaware] were clearly marked, with the names of the deceased included on death certificates, authorities said. But Kimberly Chandler, spokeswoman for the Delaware Division of Forensic Science, declined to release the names of the nine people to The Associated Press. Chandler said officials were working to notify relatives.

The massacre/suicide at Jonestown took place shortly after a visit from California Congressman Leo Ryan and his then aide Jackie Speier, along with a news crew from NBC, visited pastor Jim Jones and his flock of followers at the Peoples' Temple on November 17, 1978. Jones had relocated the Temple and many of his diverse group of parishioners to Guyana, the only English-speaking country in South America, after facing heightened media scrutiny in San Francisco and allegations of physical and sexual abuse from Temple members.

While many joined the Temple for its radically integrationist, Christian, and Socialist values, they were ultimately caught up in Jones' drug- and ego-fueled delusion, and on November 18 were ordered to drink cyanide-laced Flavor-Aid grape punch, and to give it to their children first. The few members who managed to escape reported seeing anyone who resisted either get shot, or they were forced to consume the poison. It remains the largest mass suicide in human history.

Jones himself died from multiple gunshot wounds to the head and groin, most likely self-inflicted.

Wednesday 17 September 2014

http://sfist.com/2014/08/08/cremated_remains_of_nine_jonestown.php

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/15/jonestown-victims-names-peoples-temple/15684473/

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6 dead, 21 missing 28 days after coal mine blast in Anhui

The search continues for 21 missing coal miners after an explosion in east China's Anhui province 28 days ago trapped the workers in the mine.

An explosion ripped through the mine at about 4 am on Aug. 19 when a total of 39 workers were in mine shafts hundreds of meters underground. Twelve of them managed to escape.

So far rescuers have retrieved the bodies of six workers, but the search for the remaining miners has been hampered by collapsed mine shafts and gas pockets.

Coal deposits at the site of the accident in Huainan City are deep underground, pushing miners to travel to dangerous depths to extract the ore. The Dongfang Mine shaft, where the workers are trapped, descends 500 meters underground.

The provincial coal mine safety inspection bureau revoked the privately-owned Dongfang coal mine's production permit on Tuesday. The operation has an annual production capacity of 90,000 tonnes.

At the time of the incident the mine was operating illegally.

Although the mine was officially licensed, the city government had issued production suspension orders for all coal mines beginning June 30 as part of a flood prevention effort.

The provincial government on Monday urged a thorough overhaul of mines with an annual capacity equal to or lower than 90,000 tonnes, and pledged to provide subsidies for closed mines.

Bai Fafu, a miner who narrowly escaped the Dongfang mine blast, told Xinhua that although the mining is risky, he would seek jobs in other coal mines no matter what, as it was the highest form of income in the local area.

Farmers have surrendered their land to mining firms. The deep-well drilling has damaged the land, making it impossible to be reclaimed after the mineral resources are dug out.

Wednesday 17 September 2014

http://www.ecns.cn/2014/09-16/134674.shtml

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Search continues for missing passengers of sunken ferry

Search and rescue operations continued yesterday for the lone remaining missing passenger of the ferry M/V Maharlika 2 that sank off Southern Leyte on Saturday.

The Coast Guard identified the missing passenger as Felizardo Saberon.

“We believe that this person is on board the ship and is still missing because he is the only one who has relatives looking for him,” PCG Cmdr. Armand Balilo said.

The Coast Guard has issued a notice to mariners to alert commercial ships passing Southern Leyte to be on the lookout and render assistance if they spot Saberon.

“With the recovered bodies, the total number of fatalities has increased to eight,” said Navy spokesman, Lt. Cmdr. Marideth Domingo.

The Coast Guard earlier said 110 passengers survived the tragedy.

Sources from the National Disaster and Risk Reduction Management Council said the sinking of M/V Maharlika 2 was not related to Typhoon Luis.

The roll-on, roll-off ferry sank after developing steering problems off the coastal town of San Ricardo.

Tuesday 16 September 2014

http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2014/09/17/1369965/search-continues-missing-passengers-sunken-ferry

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Migrant boat was 'deliberately sunk' in Mediterranean sea, killing 500

About 500 migrants are feared to have drowned after the boat carrying them from Egypt to Malta was apparently rammed and deliberately sunk by people-traffickers, an intergovernmental group has said.

The news – based on the accounts of two Palestinian survivors – emerged on the same day up to 200 more people were feared dead when another boat heading to Europe capsized off Libya.

The Geneva-based International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said there was no independent verification for what happened to the vessel heading to Malta, mainly because only nine people are believed to have survived. The IOM's account comes from the two Palestinians, who were rescued by another boat and taken to Sicily.

Malta's armed forces said it had flown seven survivors, who were suffering from hypothermia, to a hospital in Crete. It said initial information pointed to a collision of some sort between a boat carrying up to 400 migrants and another vessel.

If the Palestinian men's account is correct, by the IOM's tally about 2,900 migrants have died this year in the Mediterranean against 700 for all of 2013. "If this story, which police are investigating, is true, it would be the worst shipwreck in years – not an accident but a mass murder, perpetrated by criminals without scruples or any respect for human life," the IOM said in a statement.

The UN High Commission for Refugees said the situation in the Mediterranean was unclear and it was trying to get confirmation of five shipwrecks. A spokeswomanfor the UN High Commission for Refugees, Carlotta Sami, described it as "without any doubt the deadliest weekend ever in the Mediterranean" and the agency said it believed at least 500 were dead or missing in the last three days.

Leonard Doyle, an IOM spokesman, said the Palestinian men recounted having boarded the people-smuggling vessel in Damietta, Egypt, on 6 September. Midway through the voyage the people-smugglers, who appeared to be travelling in a separate boat, ordered the migrants, who also came from Syria, Sudan and Egypt, to switch to a smaller, less seaworthy vessel. The migrants refused to do so.

Doyle said: "The survivors said the traffickers became so enraged after the migrants refused to board the replacement craft, there was an argument, a fight, and that the smugglers used their boat to sink the one the migrants were on. It seems they intentionally rammed the ship."

One of the Palestinian man, aged 27, said he was able to cling to a lifebuoy for a day and a half, initially with around six other passengers.

Doyle said: "Over the next 24 hours they all disappeared. The man said that among these was one young Egyptian who said he had left home to earn money and pay for the heart medicine of his father."

The survivor was eventually picked up by a Panama-registered container ship that was already carrying 386 survivors from another sunk migrant boat, and taken to Sicily. The same ship seemingly picked up the other Palestinian man, who is aged 33. The IOM has not spoken to the other seven survivors.

The IOM learned of the men's account over the weekend and sent an Egyptian investigator to speak to them. A spokeswoman for the Italian coastguard said it had no information on the apparent sinking as it had not had contact with any survivors. A search of the area had uncovered no trace of a boat or any bodies, she added.

Earlier on Monday, the Libyan navy said a migrant boat carrying around 250 people capsized off the coast near Tripoli. While 36 people were confirmed rescued, many others were feared dead.

A navy spokesman, Ayub Qassem, told Reuters the boat had sunk near Tajoura, east of the capital, Tripoli. He said: "There are so many dead bodies floating in the sea."

Doyle said the IOM had not previously heard of so many migrants drowning by a deliberate sinking, but that if it had happened it was possible no one survived. "On the face of it it's looking like a horrific incident," he said.

Huge numbers of people are attempting to flee from Africa to Europe, with numbers sharply up this year, in part due to the continued violent chaos in Libya and Syria. More than 100,000 people have been rescued since January, the UNHCR, says.

According to the agency that monitors the EU's external borders, more migrants are likely to risk the dangerous crossings this year than at the height of the Arab spring.

By mid-August this year there had already been almost as many illegal border crossings counted as there were in the whole of 2011, when the number reached 140,000, said Frontex.

Doyle said the situations in Libya and Syria were undoubtedly part of the reason for the increased deaths, with "desperate" migrants willing to try the crossing in almost any vessel. "They're very much at the mercy of traffickers," he said.

Earlier this year a leading Libyan people smuggler, speaking anonymously to the Guardian, explained how he uses a different tactic to ensure the trafficking boat can be used again.

The man said that once the Italian military was en route to the ship he and his crew would decamp to a small rubber inflatable. Once the migrants are removed they return to the smuggling boat and return in it to Libya.

Monday 15 September 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/15/migrant-boat-capsizes-egypt-malta-traffickers

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Nowshera bus capsize: 21 persons still missing

As twenty one persons of the Nowshera Bus capsize are still missing, the Indian army has contacted Pakistani counterparts to locate bodies across the border.

As per Police sources, forty six bodies have been recovered so far by the rescue teams, while 21 persons are still missing out of the total 67 persons, who were of travelling on the ill fated Bus at the time of mishap.

“Anticipating that the missing persons may have been swept to other side of the border, the Indian army has established contact with Pakistan counterparts to locate the bodies” Police sources said.

They said that the Pak authorities have assured that the bodies would be handed over to the India if they found any.

Sources said that the Pak army was contacted considering the fact that one body of the accident victim was recovered at a distance of about 75 kilometres from the incident site in Pallanwala area of Khour.

Pertinently, a bus carrying 67 persons of a marriage party were washed away in Ghambir rivulet of Lam area of Nowshera when it was on way to Lam village located near LoC.

The incident took place on September 4 at 12:43 PM after which teams of state police, army and NDRF launched rescue operation. The bus was pulled out of the rivulet on 5th of September and fourteen dead bodies were recovered from it while rest thirty two bodies were recovered down the stream.

Meanwhile, the locals of the area have set up a memorial at Thalka village on Jammu - Rajouri - Poonch highway in the shape of a huge hoarding depicting the photos of all those who lost life in the tragic accident.

Monday 15 September 2014

http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/2014/Sep/14/nowshera-bus-capsize-21-persons-still-missing-36.asp

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Death toll in ferry sinking now at eight; five still missing

The death toll from M/V Maharlika 2 has now reached eight as five more bodies were recovered during the search, rescue, and retrieval operations, Marisol Abdurahman's report on "24 Oras" said on Monday evening.

One of the bodies recovered by the Philippine Navy, Philippine Air Force, and Philippine Coast Guard off the shore one of Surigao City's islands was that of a girl aged two to three years old.

According to Lt. Cmdr. Marideth Domingo, chief of the Navy Public Affairs Office, the recovered bodies have already been claimed by relatives.

"Two of the cadavers are included in the missing individuals reported yesterday. Isa na lang po ngayon ang reportedly missing pa rin," she said, adding search and rescue operations will resume on Tuesday.

According to the survivors, the Coast Guard allowed the vessel to leave the port despite adverse weather conditions that started on Friday night. No typhoon signal had been raised in the province.

"Nung gabi pa lang malakas na hangin dito. Alam naman nila kung puwedeng lumayag o hindi," said one Ma. Isabel Colmenares, one of the survivors.

According to the report, 116 passengers including the crew were on board the vessel. Five persons are still missing, while 113 have been rescued. Three bodies have been recovered earlier.

"May nakuha akong tali. Ginanyan ko dito lahat para ma save ako," said Juditha Reyes, one of the 113 survivors/

M/V Maharlika 2 is a roll-on/roll-off vessel that sank off Southern Leyte between 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday afternoon.

Philharbor Ferries and Port Services, Inc., the owner of the vessel, has said that it was cooperating with the authorities in the search, rescue, and retrieval operations, the report added.

Philharbor also promised to make sure all persons on board the vessel were accounted for. It would also coordinate with coast guard's investigating team to find out the root of the incident.

The operator of the inter-island vessel that sank off Southern Leyte over the weekend said it was looking into a supposed "discrepancy" in the total number of passengers onboard when the incident happened.

According to the coast guard, there were passengers rescued who were not listed in the manifest, which should include complete information on passengers, crew, and cargo.

"Apparently, there was a lapse in the implementation of such protocol," Philharbor said in an email to GMA News Online on Monday.

"[We are] currently investigating on the discrepancy in terms of actual number of passengers who boarded the vessel versus those listed in the manifest. As a standard operating procedure, the list of passengers including the crew should be submitted by the personnel in-charge to the PCG (Philippine Coast Guard) prior to depature," it said.

Philharbor said Maharlika 2 left the station in Lipata, Surigao with 113 people onboard, including 81 passengers and 32 crew members onboard, as well as the following rolling cargo:

five six-wheeler trucks,
one passenger bus,
six 10-wheeler trucks, and
a four-wheeler truck

In an interview with "News To Go" on Monday morning, PCG spokesperson Commander Armand Balilo said two dozen people onboard the vessel were not listed in the manifesto.

He said a corrected entry from the ship's captain showed that a total of 116 passengers were on the vessel, with the figures coming from personnel's survey with the crew and passengers with relatives onboard.

"Initially ho, sabi ng kapitan, 'yung drivers nu'ng bus at mga pahinante ay hindi isinama sa mga pasahero na nakalista," Balilo said, adding that they will let Maharlika 2's operator explain the exclusion.

Vessel 'prepared'

In the aftermath of the incident, Philharbor management said it "has activated its Emergency Preparedness Team to attend to all [the] needs" of passengers in the incident, and it has established an investigating team to find out what happened.

The vessel, which has a 403-person capacity, was "prepared for incidents of this nature," with 12 inflatable and six rigid life rafts that can carry 25 persons each, as well as "complete life saving devices on board based on the requirement" of the International Convention on the Safety of Life at Sea and the Maritime Industry Authority, it also said.

Personnel have been sent to Lipata, Surigao and Liloan in Southern Leyte to assist in the incident, it added.

Some 109 passengers and crew members have been rescued, Philharbor said, adding that "the only person declared missing ... is our Chief Engineer, Nelson Custodio."

"He was among the last to leave the ship and was last seen trying to save a child clutched in his arms," it said.

Meanwhile, the number of casualties in the incident has risen to eight, as the PCG continued its search and rescue operations on Monday.

According to Balilo, the Coast Guard needs to account for the missing passengers first before completely proceeding with the investigation on what went wrong in the incident.

He said Monday that the vessel's sinking was not due to Typhoon Luis, adding that the crew cited "dead on water," or a mechanical failure when they called for help.

Monday 15 September 2014

http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/379302/news/regions/death-toll-in-ferry-sinking-now-at-eight-five-still-missing

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In a land of death, Iraq’s morgue workers seek answers

The middle-aged man was killed at night, walking to his car in the Iraqi capital. No one seemed to know who did it or why.

The man’s bloated corpse lay on the metal examining table. His family waited outside. The only solid information about his death was in a vial that Doctor Aysa, a forensic pathologist, was holding in the air.

“Two bullets in the chest and one in the head,” she said.

In this country awash in death, most killers are never caught. The brutal Islamic State militants kill with impunity in the cities they control. Elsewhere, Iraqi police are too poorly trained, too overwhelmed, too powerless to solve cases. Sometimes they themselves are the perpetrators.

But the Baghdad morgue is one of the few places where you can get answers.

“We see the dark side of society,” said Doctor Iman, a 36-year-old radiologist. “I think we see the truth — not just what we see on television or read in the newspaper.”

Iraq’s homicide rate soared during the Sunni-Shiite fighting of 2006-2007, then plunged. Now it is rising again. According to the U.N. mission for Iraq, at least 1,265 civilians were killed in August 2014, compared with 716 a year earlier. The jump reflects the rise of the Islamic State group but also other factors. The slashes and burns on recently delivered bodies suggest that old tactics from the sectarian warfare are returning.

The morgue workers, dressed in their blue smocks and surgical masks, try to bring science to this anarchic world. They know things about the landscape of violence that slip past other people.

They know how death comes not just from car bombs or militia gunmen but from a crumbling state. A startling number of Iraqis die from electrocution in generator accidents — a sign that 11 years after the U.S. invasion, the government still can’t provide a basic level of electricity to its citizens.

They know that suicide has been on the rise this year, especially among young women who drink rat poison or set themselves on fire because they’re so depressed.

The doctors, of course, can’t make up for an inept police department or a corrupt state, or do much about the massacres in areas that Islamic State controls.

Sunday 14 September 2014

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-a-land-of-death-iraqs-morgue-workers-seek-answers/2014/09/13/192fe5b5-3a40-4e32-9896-8ade357854ad_story.html

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20 die as bus plunges down cliff in Southern Peru

At least 20 people died and another 11 were injured when a passenger bus plunged Saturday into a 200-meter (655-foot) ravine in the southern Peruvian region of Apurimac, National Police said.

The accident occurred at kilometer 313 (mile 194) on the highway between the towns of Puquio and Chalhuanca, as the bus was en route from Nazca province in the coastal region of Ica to Cuzco in the Andes.

The bus fell off the edge of a cliff, tumbling into a 200-meter ravine. At the moment police are investigating the cause of the incident, however this section of the highway is notoriously known as `siete vueltas,´or seven turns.

According to a preliminary report, 11 women and 9 men died in the crash.

The passengers were on their way to take part in the traditional religious feast of Our Lord of Huanca.

The main day of Señor de Huanca is celebrated on September 14th. Falling upon a Sunday this year, the ceremony is characterized by a massive pilgrimage of devotees.

“It’s a difficult area for rescue work, and no bodies have yet been recovered,” a police official in Chalhuanca told RPP Noticias radio.

Corps of volunteer firefighters have reached the scene of the accident and have taken the injured to a nearby hospital, while work continues to recover the bodies of the dead.

Accidents of this kind are common in Peru’s interior, mostly caused by vehicles and highways in a poor state of repair, careless driving and the rough terrain.

Sunday 14 September 2014

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=2351975&CategoryId=14095

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16 killed as bus plunges into stream in Uttarakhand

16 people were killed and 15 injured when the bus they were travelling in rolled down a gorge and plunged into a stream in Uttarakhand’s Tehri district on Saturday in one of the worst road accidents in the hilly state in recent times.

Tehri Garhwal superintendent of police Mukhtar Moussin said the accident occurred at Juyalgarh near Srinagar Garhwal, 40 km from Pauri, at around 11.30 am.

The bus was going from Rishikesh to Chamoli when the driver lost control while overtaking another vehicle at a sharp bend, police said quoting survivors.

There were 33 passengers on the bus named ‘Nandadevi Express’ (UK 07/TC 0702) when the mishap occurred.

15 persons have been admitted to the base hospital at Srinagar with varying degrees of injuries. Two of the passengers escaped with minor injuries and released after first-aid.

Moussin said all the bodies have been retrieved from the mangled remains of the bus, which rolled down nearly 20 feet into the gorge before coming to rest half-submerged in the stream.

Earth-moving vehicles and cranes have been deployed to retrieve the bus from the stream.

Expressing shock at the loss of lives in the accident, chief minister Harish Rawat announced compensation of Rs. 1 lakh each to the next of kin of the deceased and Rs. 50,000 each for the injured.

Sunday 14 September 2014

http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/bus-falls-into-gorge-in-uttarakhand-16-killed/article1-1263624.aspx

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Three dead, 111 rescued after Philippines ferry sinks

Three people were killed as rescuers searched for at least three others still missing with more than a hundred rescued after a ferry sank in waters off the central Philippines, officials said.

Coast guard official Joseph Coyme said on Sunday that rescue efforts would continue because it was uncertain how many passengers and crew were on the Maharlika II.

The ferry sank late on Saturday off Panaon Island in the province of Southern Leyte, after it was hit by huge waves during bad weather worsened by the approach of Typhoon Kalmaegi to the northern Philippines, civil defence officials said.

The ship took on water and went down as coast guard and private vessels rushed to pick up the survivors.

Around 111 survivors have been rescued by two passing ships and another ferry deployed for rescue operations by the company that owned the Maharlika.

That figure is way beyond the 58 passengers and 26 crew that the Maharlika's captain reported in the distress call to the coast guard, Coyme said.

"There are discrepancies in the numbers and we cannot terminate the search and rescue until we're sure that everybody has been accounted for,'' Coyme told the AP news agency.

With clear weather in the central provinces south of the storm, the coast guard cleared the Maharlika to leave Surigao city around noon for a regular domestic run.

The captain sent the distress call a few hours later.

Poorly-maintained, loosely-regulated ferries are the backbone of maritime travel in the sprawling archipelago of over 7,107 islands.

But this has led to frequent accidents that have claimed hundreds of lives in recent years, including the world's worst peacetime maritime disaster in 1987 when the Dona Paz ferry collided with an oil tanker, leaving more than 4,300 dead.

Sunday 14 September 2014

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2014/09/philippines-saves-100-after-ferry-sinks-201491424432318663.html

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Thirty killed in truck crash in Central African Republic

At least 30 people were killed when an truck carrying oil and laden with passengers plunged into a ravine in Central African Republic, a local official said on Saturday.

The accident took place near the town of Boali, some 95 km (60 miles) northwest of the capital Bangui, on the main road to the Cameroonian border. The highway is used to transport food and supplies to the Central African capital.

"The vehicle was transporting cans of oil and there were a lot of people travelling on top," Mathurine Gbadin, deputy prefect of Boali, told. "It wanted to overtake another vehicle and plunged into a ravine."

Gbadin said at least 30 people were killed and dozens more injured had been transported to Bangui by African Union peacekeepers.

Saturday 13 September 2014

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/09/13/uk-centralafrica-crash-idUKKBN0H80FF20140913

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At least 63 rescued after passenger ferry sinks off the Eastern Philippines, 21 missing

A ferry with at least 84 passengers and crew onboard sank on Saturday off the coast of central Philippines after a mechanical problem, and authorities said they were searching for at least 21 passengers who were still missing.

Three ships, including a foreign-registered liquefied petroleum gas carrier, rushed to the area where the ferry sank near the coast of Southern Leyte province.

An estimated 84 people — 58 passengers and 26 crew members — were on board the Maharlika II when it sank off the coastal province of Southern Leyte, Coast Guard spokesman Lieutenant Armand Balilo said.

“Rescuers are having difficulty in the area because of huge waves and strong winds,” the provincial governor, Roger Mercado, told a Manila radio station.

Mercado said 13 passengers were rescued by a sister ferry of the Maharlika and another 50 by a foreign vessel. Balilo said the Coast Guard has dispatched additional rescue teams to the area. The ferry was on its way to Surigao City from Liloan town in Southern Leyte, a trip of about three hours.

Mercado said the ferry sent a distress signal after its rudder broke, stalling the vessel while it was being battered by the waves and winds.

The accident took place as typhoon Kalmaegi, packing maximum winds of 120 kilometres per hour and gusts of up to 150 kph, barrelled towards the northern Philippines from the country’s east coast. Balilo said there was no storm signal warning over Southern Leyte or Surigao when the accident happened.

Nonoy Caseres, a brother of a passenger, said he last spoke with his sibling at 6 pm (1000 GMT).

“He was crying,” Caseres told DZMM radio station.

He added that his brother told him: “We’ve been ordered to abandon ship. There is no rescue coming.”

Before the phone call, Caseres said his brother, who was travelling with his wife, sent him an SMS saying, “God be with us.”

Southern Leyte Governor Roger Mercado told authorities were verifying eyewitness reports that around 100 people boarded the ferry, more than the 84 people listed on the ship's manifest.

Sea travel is a key mode of transportation in the Philippines, an archipelago of more than 7,000 islands. But accidents are common because of poor safety standards and overloading. The country was the site of the world’s worst peacetime maritime disaster when a ferry collided with an oil tanker days before Christmas in 1987, killing more than 4,300 people.

Saturday 13 September 2014

http://www.gulf-times.com/asean-philippines/188/details/408089/at-least-63-rescued-after-passenger-ferry-sinks

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9 migrants rescued, 20 feared dead off Malta

Maltese and Italian vessels are searching for more than 20 migrants feared dead after a boat carrying them sunk 300 miles south east of Malta.

The operation started Friday after a merchant ship rescued two migrants who said a total of 30 had been on board.

The Italian Coast Guard rescued another seven migrants. The survivors, including two children, have been taken to Greece, the nearest landfall and within helicopter range.

The alert was raised yesterday afternoon by the cargo ship Pegasus which spotted and recovered two persons who were in the water. They reported they had been in a boat carrying 30 migrants which had sunk.

The ship informed Malta rescue coordination centre which immediately started coordinating a search involving several cargo ships, three Italian coast guard vessels, three Italian aircraft and one Maltese aircraft.

An Italian coastguard aircraft spotted a group of survivors in the water and dropped a life raft to assist them. Seven persons, including two children, were eventually picked up merchant ships in the area. They are conveying them to Greece, which has the nearest harbour. Some of them needed urgent medical assistance and were ferried to hospital by a Greek helicopter.

One of the corpses picked up by a cargo ship is being brought to Malta today.

The search will continue this morning.

A number of corpses were also found. One of the corpses is to be brought to Malta by a cargo ship later today.

The numbers of migrants fleeing conflicts and risking the perilous sea voyages from Libya to Europe has swelled this year. Some 110,000 people have been rescued since January, and the U.N. refugee agency says at least 1,889 others have died.

Saturday 13 September 2014

http://www.wbtw.com/story/26523089/9-migrants-rescued-others-feared-dead-off-malta

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140913/local/afm-coordinates-search-after-migrants-boat-sinks-several-survivors-and-corpses-found.535444

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Searching for El Salvador's disappeared

Inside their tiny home in a poor neighbourhood of San Salvador, Ana Elizondo and her husband hold religious celebrations for their friends and neighbours, singing and praying several times a week.

It's a chance for them to find comfort through their faith. Outside Elizondo's front door, street gangs run the neighbourhood, and maintain their grip through fear and violence as they do in many other communities throughout this country. "My children are running a risk every day but I can't lock them up. They must confront the life we are living every day. And that is, you go out and may never return".

That is what happened to her son over three years ago, when 14-year-old Josue went out and never came back. "Someone was going to introduce him to a girl," Elizondo says about the day her son left.

She began her frantic search that night and hasn't stopped since, despite threats from gang members. She and her family believe the meeting with a girl was a trap set by the gangs, and that Josue was killed because he refused to join their ranks. He has yet to be found.

Standing in front of a map dotted by the secret graves he has discovered throughout El Salvador, Israel Ticas tells Al Jazeera, "This is their modus operandi." According to Ticas, who works as a forensic archaeologist and criminologist for the main prosecutor's office, the violent gangs' strategy is a simple one: "If there is no body, there is no crime."

From every wall of his office, faces of the dead look out. The graphic images consist of people disappeared by gangs, most of them dismembered, and all of them hidden until Ticas and his team finds them. He has exhumed thousands of bodies at over 800 grave sites.

A collection of soil samples from different sites sits on one shelf in Ticas' office. In a jar, a small, dismembered hand of a young woman is almost perfectly preserved; her nails are still painted red. Ticas tells Al Jazeera that 75 percent of the gangs' victims are women. "A woman in my country is more vulnerable," he says. "First, because of the culture. A woman is a sexual symbol, an object, and the degree of barbarity used to kill a man is often not as extreme as that used to kill a woman."

On his Facebook page, under the name "el abogado de los muertos", or "the lawyer for the dead", he posts pictures of clothing, possessions and any clues he discovers to help families identify their dead. Many come to the sites where he digs. "They tell me please find at least some of my child's bones so I can die in peace."

Others phone him and urge him to search in specific places, but he says he cannot unless they have made a criminal complaint and the case is under investigation, which many families won't do. "People say nothing," he says. "People are afraid."

In this tiny nation of just over six million, assistance in helping families search for their loved ones has not been a priority due to fear of reprisals. According to police figures given to Al Jazeera, crime related violence has claimed the lives of an estimated 21,394 people since 2009, and the majority were victims of gang related violence.

Police also say at least 2,166 people have gone missing since the beginning of 2013. But with so many graves still to be discovered, and not all families reporting a missing relative, those numbers are likely to be much higher.

"In reality it's very difficult to give a concrete number," El Salvador's Human Rights Ombudsman David Morales says. He is critical of the lack of support for suffering families, and adds that "for decades the state has not made victims a priority".

"In El Salvador, historically, victims have been discriminated against; the victims of armed conflict, of political violence after the civil war and victims of violent crime," he adds.

'Tortured and dismembered'

As a result, families and mothers in particular have now become the primary point people in searching for the missing. They go from hospitals, to the police and prosecutor's offices, and to the morgue, photos in hand, to plead for information.

At San Salvador's morgue, Maria Eugenia Ayala is looking for her son, who has been missing since January. Another parent, Jorge Alberto Perez, says he and his wife have looked everywhere for their daughter. "We are looking for her, whether she's alive or dead. And if she's dead, I want the authorities to turn her over to us," he tells Al Jazeera,

Inside the morgue, at least 80 boxes are stacked in two small rooms, each containing the bones of a person. Oscar Armando Quijano, who manages the morgue, says identifying the remains is a challenge. "We can see they are tortured and dismembered, so we can only find body parts. By doing this, the criminals are sending the message of what they are capable of doing."

In a cell at the back of a local police station, 18th street gang member Alfonso tells Al Jazeera that he can't comment on the disappeared. "These are things that only we know. I can't explain it to you. It's a rule of the gang," he says. For the second time in two years, the 18th street gang and its rival, Mara Salvatrucha, agreed to a truce on August 31. But their pledge to stop the killings didn't include an offer to help find the dead.

"Before the [last] truce we had 12, 13 murders a day nationally, and then it dropped to five," says Howard Cotto, the deputy police chief. He also adds that when the murders started to drop, the cases of disappeared persons began to rise.

Meanwhile, on a bus ride to her local prosecutor's office, a journey she makes every two weeks, Ana Elizondo has little hope investigators will bring her news of Josue's whereabouts. "The authorities tell me to be patient, nothing more," she tells Al Jazeera, as her meeting once again yields no results.

"Each time they tell me to bring them some new information, but I don't know anything."

Saturday 13 September 2014

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/09/searching-el-salvador-disappeared-persons-gang-violence-201491212519331225.html

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