85 dead migrants found washed up in Libya, 2 children in Kos

The bodies of 85 migrants have been found washed up on the coast of Libya, a major departure point for the sea crossing to Europe, the Red Crescent said Monday. Since Tuesday, volunteers have recovered dozens of bodies of migrants in an advanced stage of decomposition on beaches near the capital, spokesman Mohamed al-Misrati said.

They found 75 bodies around Tripoli and another 10 in Sabratah, 70 kilometres (43 miles) to the west, he said.

The Libyan coastguard said it had also rescued 212 migrants from two overloaded rubber dinghies off the Libyan coast.

“We were informed of the presence of two large zodiacs off the coast of Garabulli” 60 kilometres east of Tripoli, a coastguard officer told AFP.

He said that 22 women were among the rescued migrants, who were of different nationalities including many Senegalese and Sudanese.

A Libyan Red-Crescent team, in collaboration with the Libyan navy, on Friday recovered 26 bodies of illegal migrants off the coasts of Tajoura, in the eastern suburb of Tripoli.

“The Red-Crescent team recovered 26 bodies that are supposed to be those of illegal migrants found off the coasts of the region of Tajoura.

“The bodies were transferred to the morgue of the medical centre in Tripoli,’’ the Director of Information at the Red-Crescent, Malek Marsait, said.

According to him, the Libyan Red-Crescent team had earlier on Wednesday recovered the bodies of three others at the same place, despite the difficult access to the place.

Libya, with a coastline of 1,770 kilometres, has for years been a stepping stone for Africans bound for Europe. Most head for Italy’s Lampedusa island which is 300 kilometres from Libya.

People smugglers have taken advantage of chaos in Libya since the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed veteran dictator Moamer Kadhafi to step up their lucrative business. In exchange for steep fees, they take would-be migrants on board rickety boats for the treacherous crossing.

About 515,000 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean this year alone, with up to 3,000 people dead or reported missing in that period, according to the UN High Commission for Refugees.

Meanwhile, the badly decomposed bodies of two children were found washed up on the Greek island of Kos, the latest victims of a crisis that has seen 630,000 people enter the EU illegally this year.

A dead baby boy, thought to be less than a year old, was discovered on a hotel beach early Sunday, dressed in green trousers and a white t-shirt. The decomposed body of an older child, wearing blue trousers and a pink t-shirt, believed to be three- to five-years old, was found hours later at the same spot. Authorities believe the children were from migrant families that had been trying to reach Kos by dinghy, Greek media reported.

Both bodies have been transferred to hospital for an autopsy and DNA testing. Greece has been struggling to cope with a wave of migrants making the dangerous crossing from Turkey.

The EU’s border chief Fabrice Leggeri said 630,000 people have entered the bloc illegally this year. Brussels and Ankara are reportedly set to approve Monday a plan that would see Turkey join Greek coastguard patrols in the eastern Aegean, coordinated by EU border protection agency Frontex.

Tuesday 6 October 2015

http://nation.com.pk/international/06-Oct-2015/85-dead-migrants-found-washed-up-in-libya

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Mecca stampede: DNA extracted from unidentified bodies to find missing pilgrims

Results of DNA samples, extracted from nails of unidentified dead pilgrims to compare them with the relatives of the missing Egyptians, will be announced after 10 days, the Minister of Health Ahmed Emad announced Sunday.

The samples were extracted by Saudi authorities. There are a total 96 Egyptians reported missing during the annual event of Hajj, meaning pilgrimage.

The Saudi authorities first took hand prints of all the deceased, “which is no longer useful and accurate due to the decomposition of the body,” Rady said in a Sunday statement. He added that DNA under fingernails gives more conclusive results within not more than 14 days.

Saudi Arabia previously announced it had agreed to receive DNA samples from Egyptians whose relatives have been missing to compare them with the bodies of unidentified victims.

Rady also said that five Egyptian pilgrims are the total death toll in an accident that took place right ahead of Hajj season, when a construction crane fell on pilgrims in the Mecca’s holy mosque killing more than 100. Seven out of 28 Egyptians injured in the accident are still receiving treatment in Saudi Arabia hospitals.

Some of the pilgrims suffered memory loss during the season, due to being subjected to “sunstroke,” said Rady; the temperature degrees during the season hit high in the kingdom.

The Ministry of Awqaf (Religious Endowment) has announced that the death toll of Egyptian pilgrims in a stampede in Mecca hit 138.

The five-day rituals of Hajj started Sept. 26, since then, an Egypt Air bridge has been transporting pilgrims back from Saudi Arabia.

Tuesday 6 October 2015

http://www.thecairopost.com/news/170133/news/dna-extracted-from-unidentified-bodies-to-find-missing-pilgrims

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60th anniversary of deadly Wyoming plane crash

John Vandel was a junior pharmacy major at the University of Wyoming when he and his Sigma Nu brothers received a phone call from United Airlines.

It was the morning of Friday, Oct. 7, 1955.

Flight 409 had crashed into the east side of Medicine Bow Peak just 24 hours earlier.

"The guy that called us had been in our fraternity years before," Vandel said. "So, he called our fraternity and said, 'If you get some guys up there, we're going to pay you pretty well.' So, all the guys volunteered."

People were needed to remove the bodies of the 66 people aboard the plane, and Vandel agreed to help.

"It was all curiosity," he said. "We got to go up and see what it was all about."

He didn't know the crash 40 miles west of Laramie was, at the time, the worst air disaster in United States history.

Sixty-three passengers and three crew members sat in the DC-4 aircraft, a four-engine propeller airplane, as it left Denver International Airport the morning of Oct. 6, 1955, with plans to land in Salt Lake City less than three hours later, according to United Airlines documents — just one of many documents about the crash stored in the UW American Heritage Center.

Among the 66 people aboard were members of the U.S. military, choir members from Salt Lake City and two infants.

The normal flight path goes far north of Laramie to skirt the Snowy Range. However, a United Airlines investigation after the crash concluded pilots would occasionally fly over Medicine Bow Peak to save time.

Windy weather as reported over the Snowies the night before the crash, along with possible snowfall — less than ideal flying conditions.

When flight 409 failed to report in to Rock River, fighter jets from the Wyoming Air National Guard were scrambled with orders to find a missing aircraft.

The plane crashed at 7:26 a.m., according to onboard clocks recovered after the crash, the investigation report states. It exploded on impact, creating a debris field about a mile long. Two huge black scorch marks blighted the side of the mountain.

Wreckage and bodies were catapulted over the precipice — the plane hit only 25 feet below the mountain crest. The tail section broke off and lodged itself on a small outcropping halfway down the cliff. The rest of the wreckage tumbled down snowy rocks, coming to rest at the foot of the peak.

The crash was discovered by an F-80 fighter jet based out of F. E. Warren Air Force Base at 11:40 a.m. the day of the crash. The pilot spotted "a huge black smudge where it hit the peak and pieces of wreckage that slid 200 feet down the side of the precipice," an Oct. 6, 1955, Laramie Boomerang article states.

With bad weather still engulfing the crash site, the jets were ordered back to base before more surveillance could be completed.

Bob Foster, a Civil Air Patrol member from Laramie, was the first person to reach the crash site. He recounted his experience during a 1996 interview for the American Heritage Center.

"As we walked along the tail slope of the mountain, we started to run into the wreckage, landing gears and main struts of the wing. And then you look to where we saw the plane crash and you see those airplane parts quarter of a mile away, it's obviously going to be a really bad scene. You don't really expect to find any live people."

Personnel began arriving soon after the crash was discovered — a group of 14 rescue workers from the Denver operating base of United Airlines arrived by plane at 2 p.m. Thursday.

The timing of the disaster couldn't have been worse — more than 1,500 Shriners packed the hotels of Laramie for a ceremony, leaving almost no place to house the scores of United Airlines personnel streaming into the area.

Double cots from the university were brought to the Connor Hotel. Some Shriners also gave up their rooms for emergency workers and airline personnel. More than 125 people were at the crash site by Thursday night.

Only the best mountaineers could reach the peak where a majority of the wreckage was scattered — many of the trails and paths available today did not exist in 1955.

Dr. John Bunch made the climb with airline officials, local law enforcement and reporters to the base of the cliffs above Mirror Lake to treat any potential survivors.

The state of the bodies was such that they could only "be identified only by fingerprints," he told the Boomerang.

The explosion showered the area with wreckage workers had to avoid.

"There were large sections of twisted metal at the base of the cliff, so twisted, in fact, that you couldn't tell what it was," Bunch said. "There were pieces of the plane all over the base of the mountain."

Body bags were brought to the crash site to transport the dead to the bottom of the cliff. A rope-and-pulley system about 900 feet long was created, running from the top of the cliff to the base of the mountain, UW Outing Club member Richard W. Murphy says in a report.

Vandel arrived later that Friday, after the system was set up. He worked the lower end of the pulley system.

"We got a call early that morning and we all skipped class and went up there," he said. "The university excused us."

About 30 people were helping in the area, Vandel estimated, although he didn't know how many others worked at the peak or in the identification room.

UW summer science camp — essentially a log cabin not far from the site — served as a temporary morgue.

"They did all of their identifying in there, and we weren't allowed in there," he said. "In fact, nobody wanted to go in there."

All of the victims were in bags by the time Vandel and his fraternity brothers received them at the base of the mountain — with some bags labeled "spare parts." The group avoided some of the traumatic sights others higher up the mountain saw.

"We were all kind of having fun and joking around in between trips, but it was serious business," he said.

Fifty-seven victims had been recovered from the mountain by the afternoon of the following Monday, a spokesman from United Airlines stated in the Oct. 10 Boomerang. He estimated 125 people were still working at the site.

Members of the University of Wyoming and the University of Colorado alpine teams were working in six-man shifts, searching for and lowering bodies.

By that Tuesday, all victims had been recovered and identified.

While the victims had been removed from the site, wreckage from the large four-engine airplane was still strewn about, from pistons and wing struts to landing gear and propellers. However, the entire tail section of the plane was still lodged precariously in the mountain face.

It was decided the wreckage needed to be destroyed to discourage curious climbers. The solution was to shoot the tail down with a recoilless rifle — similar to a small artillery piece — Don Sims said in a 1996 American Heritage Center interview.

"They didn't want to leave it there because there were so many people crawling around in there," he said. "Do you think that thing would come down? Oh no — it took hit after hit."

Eventually, the wreckage was dispersed, but many pieces of the destroyed aircraft litter the mountain base to this day.

Several theories formed about what caused the crash, but none was confirmed.

Three local loggers were working at a site about 10 miles southeast of the crash, and one told the board the right inboard motor of the DC-4 was not rotating, possibly indicating some sort of mechanical failure.

United Airlines officials said wreckage showed the engine was working; Even if the engine was out, it should not have caused a crash.

The loggers also estimated the plane was at about 10,000 feet — the plane was about 300 feet above the treetops and the camp's elevation was 9,600 feet. Board members said this was "dangerously low," especially for an unpressurized aircraft — passengers would begin to feel ill effects at that altitude.

Throughout the investigation, United Airlines managers in Denver and Salt Lake City said the pilot, Capt. Clinton C. Cooke, Jr., and his first officer Ralph D. Salisburg, Jr, were good pilots with a perfect record. Cooke had flown the route 45 times in the previous year, a Civil Aeronautics Board Accident Investigation Report states, and had never been known to deviate from the flight plan without telling a dispatcher.

However, it is almost certain the pilots purposely went out of their way to fly over the mountains, the report states.

"It is difficult to understand how a pilot of Capt. Cooke's experience would deliberately attempt a shortcut and, even if he did, why he would have flown at such a low altitude over hazardous terrain," it states. "It is true the flight was an hour and 11 minutes late; however, the time saved by taking a shortcut would have been inconsequential."

It goes on to state deviating from the course "would have been breaking rigid company rules and his record indicated that he had never been known to do so."

Carbon monoxide poisoning leading to crew incapacitation was also listed as a possible — albeit unlikely — cause.

Today, hikers and climbers near Medicine Bow Peak can view pieces of the wreckage, although the black scars on the cliff face faded long ago.

Vandel kept a piece of wreckage for many years, he said, and still occasionally thinks about the crash today.

"I kept on wondering, over the years, how the devil they did it," he said. "How did he happen to just run into a mountain?"

Tuesday 6 October 2015

http://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/tuesday-marks-th-anniversary-of-deadly-wyoming-plane-crash/article_1a650b63-9514-5a81-ba37-8777328cd04e.html

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Italian lab battles ‘not to lose the dead’ from migrant ships

In one photograph, a pretty, young Eritrean woman dressed in cheerful colors smiles brightly into the camera. In another, glazed eyes stare out of a blue, bloated face, typical of drowning victims.

But it is the teeth, frozen in a grimace of death, that the scientists here were interested in. They were a match.

The finding will allow them at least to let the woman’s family know for sure that she — their daughter, wife or sister perhaps — was indeed among the 368 migrants who died when their boat capsized off the Italian island of Lampedusa two years ago this month as they tried to make their way to Europe.

So far this year, almost 2,900 migrants have drowned making the crossing to Europe from North Africa. Very often, they are the nameless victims of one of this young century’s greatest tidal movements of people fleeing war and poverty — dying in anonymity, far from home, their loved ones left in limbo about their fates, and the authorities uncertain of exactly who they are.

Since the spring of 2014, however, this laboratory at the University of Milan has been working to give a name to those hundreds of unidentified migrants who drowned at sea in the Lampedusa wreck and others.

“Our battle is not to lose the dead,” said Dr. Cristina Cattaneo, a forensic pathologist, who runs the Labanof, the laboratory that has been building a databank to help identify the scores of victims of some of the worst migrant shipwrecks off Italy in recent years.

Even now, two years after the sinking, nearly 200 victims of the Lampedusa wreck have not been officially identified. “The more decomposed they are the more difficult it is to identify them,” Dr. Cattaneo said.

Fearful of European regulations that force migrants to ask for asylum in the first country in which they land, many migrants do not carry any ID, making identification even harder.

Another challenge has been reaching the families of the victims, many of whom live in war-torn or repressive countries, or in places where medical records are difficult to retrieve.

“Our problem has been contacting relatives,” said Vittorio Piscitelli, since 2014 Italy’s High Commissioner for Missing Persons, whose office has reached out to embassies and various humanitarian agencies — like the International Committee for the Red Cross — for assistance.

Even when relatives can be tracked down in Europe, getting them to come to Italy for the identification process can be time consuming and costly. In addition, in countries like Eritrea, where many of the Lampedusa victims came from, relatives of migrants risk repercussions from an oppressive government.

Still, over the past years, small groups of family members of presumed victims have traveled to Italy — initially to Rome but now to the lab — hoping to find news of their loved ones.

They bring fragments of lost lives — photographs, ID cards and photos or videos, clinical and dental records and personal effects like toothbrushes or combs — to help make a match.

At the lab, assisted by a psychologist, they are interviewed by trained personnel and then pore through an evolving database of personal effects, like bracelets or necklaces, phones, or clothes, looking for identifying clues.

DNA comparisons are also made, and much of the data is culled from autopsies: tattoos, surgery scars, dental records and other biological remains.

Adal Neguse, 40, an Eritrean migrant now living in Stockholm, was the first relative to arrive in Lampedusa after the Oct. 3, 2013, shipwreck, searching for his brother Abraham.

He determined from survivors that his brother had perished, and spent a fruitless week trying to find his corpse, looking at photographs of the victims.

“I finally had to stop because it was too disturbing,” he said. Abraham was eventually identified some months later through the clothing he was wearing.

Adal Neguse, 40, lost his brother in a shipwreck off the Italian island of Lampedusa. Credit Alessandro Penso for The New York Times

In Lampedusa, Mr. Neguse was inundated by telephone calls from other Eritreans who could not make the trip and did not know whom to call for information.

“People would ring all day and night,” said Mr. Neguse, who passed through Rome on Monday to take part in a commemoration ceremony for the Lampedusa victims on the island.

The aim of the laboratory, and of the Italian authority that oversees it, is eventually to help relatives like him identify their loved ones by setting up a broad database of all the victims of the Mediterranean crossing to Italy.

In attempting to do so, Italy was “moved by humanitarian and ethical reasons, as well as a sense of pietas for the dead, and to grant relatives some peace,” said Mr. Piscitelli, who coordinates the laboratory’s work.

In fact, the Lampedusa sinking of Oct. 3, 2013, though a tragedy that riveted global attention on the scale and dangers of the migrants’ crossing, is just one of several sizable calamities that the authorities and the lab have had to deal with.

Another 200 or so migrants — again mostly Eritrean — died off Lampedusa eight days after the Oct. 3 sinking. And this April, more than 700 people drowned when their ship sank some 70 nautical miles off Libya.

The Italian Navy began removing the corpses from the wreck near Libya in July and Dr. Cattaneo’s team has been carrying out the autopsies in an improvised, but high-tech, tent set up on a NATO base in Melilli, Sicily.

The team involves experts from four universities as well as biologists, anthropologists, forensic dentists and specialized technicians developing a single protocol that can be used in any shipwreck situation, she said.

After autopsies, the victims have been buried in cemeteries throughout Sicily.

So far, some 20 victims have been identified through the lab’s work.

“It’s a small number, but it means that the procedure works,” Dr. Cattaneo said. “The problem is how to enlarge it. The bigger the numbers, the bigger the costs.”

Mr. Piscitelli’s office has been lobbying to expand the database to include the victims of all shipwrecks in Italy. As of now, the lab has focused on three major shipwrecks. Other disasters have been handled by local police and prosecutors, and Mr. Piscitelli would like to better coordinate their results into one database.

But for now, his office does not have the resources. Humanitarian agencies charge that few resources are allocated to missing migrants because the dead are not a priority.

As political strife and economic conditions remain unstable in parts of the Middle East and Africa, there is no indication that migrants will stop gambling their lives for a better future in Europe any time soon. And if anything, those here say, the need for their work will continue to expand.

“It will never be over as long as poor people attempt the Mediterranean crossing, putting their lives at risk,” Mr. Piscitelli said.

Tuesday 6 October 2015

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/03/world/europe/italian-lab-battles-not-to-lose-the-dead-from-migrant-ships.html?_r=0

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French Riviera floods: Death toll rises to 19

At least 19 people, including one Briton, have been found dead following flash floods on the French Riviera.

The death toll rose after two bodies were discovered on Monday. One person remains missing but another was found alive, according to reports.

Violent storms and heavy rain on Saturday evening sent torrents of water and mud through several towns.

As well as the Briton, an Italian woman and a Portuguese man were also among those killed, AFP news agency said.

French President Francois Hollande has announced a state of "natural disaster" in the affected region.

Forecasters have faced criticism over the effectiveness of weather alerts.

'Apocalyptic'

The area is estimated to have received more than 10% of its average yearly rainfall in two days alone. Rivers burst their banks, sending water coursing into nearby towns and cities.

Divers found one body in the worst-hit town of Mandelieu-la-Napoule on Monday.

Eight are now confirmed killed there after being trapped in garages when they tried to remove their cars, officials say.

In other developments on Monday:

◾Another body was found in an underground parking lot in Cannes, leaving one person still missing in the city
◾A 90-year-old man reported missing was found alive in Antibes, according to local media
◾Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told Europe 1 (in French) that two people had been sent before a judge while seven others remained in custody after being arrest on suspicion of looting

Three elderly people drowned when their retirement home in Biot, near the city of Antibes, was flooded.

Visiting the home on Sunday, President Hollande offered his condolences and urged residents to remain cautious, saying: "It's not over."

Hundreds of volunteers have been helping clear debris and clean homes affected.

"We have lived through an apocalyptic situation that we have never experienced before," Eric Ciotti, president of the Alpes-Maritimes department, tweeted following the disaster.

Forecaster fallout

Mr Ciotti also questioned the use of an orange alert to warn residents, rather than the more serious red alert.

Christian Estrosi, the deputy mayor of Nice, added his criticism in an interview with BFMTV on Monday, saying the area received so many orange alerts that people had stopped taking all the necessary precautions.

But he denied any fallout with weather forecasters, who insisted they did not have the technical ability to predict the intensity of the storms in time.

Thousands of homes remained without electricity on Monday morning following the floods.

Meanwhile Bernard Giampaolo, director of the Marineland amusement park in Antibes, said three loggerhead turtles were still missing after the enclosures were hit.

He told Nice Matin newspaper (in French) that polar bears, orcas and dolphins had survived, although the park was still without power.

Chickens, goats and sheep had been washed away, the newspaper reported.

Tuesday 6 October 2015

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34443189

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Guatemala landslide: Death toll rises to 131 with as many as 300 potentially still missing days after disaster

The number of people killed by the deadly landslide that hit a Guatemalan city has risen to 131, authorities said, with potentially 300 more people still missing three days after the disaster.

An estimated 125 homes were buried in El Cambray, a village on the outskirts of the capital, Guatemala City, when a 300ft hillside collapsed and covered an area of four acres with mud and dirt around 14 metres deep.

Rescue workers continued to pull corpses from the mud on Sunday as families began to bury their dead in the overcrowded local cemetery.

A funeral procession for the son and grandaughter of 59-year-old carpenter and painter Ismael Estrada saw 200 people walking through the streets to the cemetary. Estrada returned to the improvised morgue immediately after the service to search for his 19 family members that are still missing.

No survivors have been found this weekend despite the efforts of around 1,800 rescue workers sifting through the rubble.

An improvised morgue has been set up and municipal medical examiner Dr Carlos Augusto Rodas Gonzalez said 86 bodies have been identified and handed over to relatives, 26 of which were children and teenagers. Some bodies were found in pieces however, and many remain unidentified.

Authorities have estimated that 300 people are still missing, but admitted that many people may have fled the area and taken refuge elsewhere or with relatives without informing rescue teams, or that they were simply not in their homes when the mudslide hit.

Reuters news agency reports the number of missing is closer to 150 claiming authorities issued a sharp revision after recalculating the local population, however the official number remains unknown.

Authorities are now preparing to use heavy machinery to search the disaster area instead of digging by hand and listening for survivors, after rescuers reported that the buried homes they were searching have been filled with water.

Around 90 per cent of the search for bodies will now be carried out with backhoes and bulldozers said services coordinator Sergio Cabanas, who explained that rescuers will mainly be sent out on foot to recover a corpse that has been turned up by the machinery.

“The people who could have been alive have drowned,” he said.

In the neighbourhood cemetery 36 new crypts have already been created, though the identification process of bodies has changed rapidly – bodies have reportedly become unrecognisable due to being buried in mud and water for three days, causing volunteers and workers in the makeshift morgue to rely on fingerprints and DNA tests to identify the dead.

“With whatever measure we have, any human remain that we receive, we will make every effort to give it a first and last name,” Dr Gonzales said.

Tuesday 6 October 2015

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/guatemala-landslide-death-toll-rises-to-131-with-as-many-as-300-potentially-still-missing-days-after-a6679706.html

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7 more bodies recovered from Pandoh Dam in Mandi, two months after bus disaster

Seven more bodies were recovered today from the Pandoh Dam in Mandi district. Eight bodies were recovered yesterday from the Larji Dam in Kullu district during a flushing out operation.

However, six of the eight bodies have been identified by relatives of pilgrims of the Manikaran bus mishap. A private bus carrying 69 pilgrims from Punjab had plunged into the Parbati river near Sarari on the Bhuntar-Manikaran road in Kullu district on July 23.

The police said seven bodies were found floating in the Pandoh Dam. They said the bodies might have reached the dam after a desilting operation was carried out in the Larji Dam yesterday.

Kullu SDM Rohit Rathore said seven more bodies were recovered from the Pandoh Dam. He said relatives of the victims had already been informed and many had arrived to identify the bodies. The SDM said the bodies had been brought to regional hospital, Kullu, as these could be of the remaining 17 missing pilgrims. He said an ex gratia of Rs 25,000 had been given to the family members of the identified victims as immediate relief.

Gill said relatives of other missing pilgrims had been informed while the bodies had been handed over to their relatives by the hospital authorities after the post-mortem examination.

However, nine more bodies recovered in the past two days remained unidentified.

An intensive rescue operation was carried out by over nearly 600 personnel of the National Disaster Response Force, Shastra Seema Bal, Indo-Tibetan Border Police, Home Guards and the police to trace the missing persons.

Tuesday 6 October 2015

http://www.tribuneindia.com/news/himachal/7-more-bodies-recovered-from-pandoh-dam-in-mandi/142096.html

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Missing ship: El Faro confirmed to have sunk off Bahamas

he lost cargo ship El Faro sank in Bahamian waters after sailing into the path of Hurricane Joaquin, according to the US Coast Guard. The 224m (735ft) vessel and its crew of 33 have been missing since issuing a distress call on Thursday. The coast guard says an "unidentifiable body" has been found but a search remains underway. On Sunday, search planes found debris including life jackets, containers and oil in the water. It was this find that led rescuers to the conclusion that the ship had sank. Along with the body, an empty, heavily damaged life boat has also been found. "We are still looking for survivors or any signs of life," US Coast Guard Capt Mark Fedor said, but adding the crew faced "challenging conditions to survive". The coast guard says it has searched 70,000 sq nautical miles attempting to find the crew of 28 Americans and five Poles. The ship, which was travelling from Florida to Puerto Rico, was taking on water before it sank according to the distress call. Its owners, Tote Maritime, say the ship lost power after its engines broke down. Satellite picture of Hurricane JoaquinImage copyrightREUTERS/NOAA Image caption Hurricane Joaquin from space Tote Maritime, said two vessels it dispatched to the scene had found a container "which appears to be from the El Faro". The company has also defended its decision to allow the ship to sail so close to a hurricane. In a statement it said the crew were "equipped to handle situations such as changing weather." Joaquin brought heavy rains to the Bahamas, damaging a number of houses. The weakened storm has since hit Bermuda. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-34443218

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Death toll after Guatemala landslide tops 130

The gangly arms of four backhoes dug through a mound of sandy soil that had buried many of the residents of El Cambray alive in a landslide.

Carefully, the diggers turned up sheet metal roofs, broken walls and the bodies of people trapped in the dirt bulging over much of the Guatemalan village.

By early Sunday, they had recovered nearly 90 bodies of people who died after the side of a towering hill broke loose suddenly and crashed down on the village in the darkness of Thursday night.

Since then, residents and rescuers have shoveled and even burrowed with their hands in search of the hundreds of victims the country's Public Ministry estimates were inside the dozens of homes that were instantly engulfed by the landslide.

By Sunday evening, the ministry was reporting 131 people were dead and more than 300 still missing.

Heavy rains sent earth and rock cascading over homes and trapping residents inside on Thursday night. No survivors have been found this weekend despite the efforts of around 1,800 rescue workers sifting through the rubble.

Rain hampered search and rescue efforts on Sunday.

In the town's crowded cemetery, families sobbed as they placed wreaths on hastily-sealed tombs stacked in walls, where simple inscriptions in cement listed the names of the dead.

Many people in El Cambray did not heed a warning to evacuate, said Alejandro Maldonado, the national coordinator for disaster reduction. El Cambray is about 10 miles (16 kilometers) east of Guatemala City.

Somber finds

Rain had soaked the village and the forested hills that rise steeply up around it. The town is nestled in a deep valley, leaving little space between the hillside and the homes below to buffer the force of the earth and trees that fell down on them.

The rescuers and villagers formed long bucket lines of up to 100 people to pass away dirt and debris. Some carried out the bodies of neighbors and loved ones, including children.

"We found the two month-old twins, and now we are looking for their mother and sister," a villager said.

"We only found one of my nieces, in a state that nobody would want to see a family member," said another.

Many were still waiting for the first body of their loved ones to turn up.

"I have 20 missing family members -- my seven brothers, my dad and my brother-in-law" among them, another villager said.

As they tried to salvage what they could from under the dirt to aid them in grieving, the pale gash in the hill left by the landslide gaped down at those digging.

On Saturday, the workers stopped what they were doing briefly and stood still for a moment of silence.

Monday 5 October 2015

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/10/05/uk-guatemala-mudslide-idUKKCN0RW1Q220151005

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For 2nd day, search in Indonesia fails to locate missing passenger plane with 10 people aboard

For a second day, searchers failed to locate a plane with 10 people on board that went missing in eastern Indonesia, officials said Sunday.

The search for the DHC-5 Twin Otter turboprop plane, owned by the Aviastar Mandiri airline, was again hindered by bad weather and rough terrain, said Henry Bambang Soelistyo, the head of Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency.

The plane lost contact with air traffic controllers 11 minutes after taking off in good weather Friday from Masamba in South Sulawesi province. It was on a routine flight to Makassar, the provincial capital, carrying three crew members and seven passengers, including three children. No distress signal was received.

"Today search have not yet produced any result as expected although we have expanded the search area," Soelistyo said. "I myself have checked locations reported by the locals, but we found nothing."

Two aircraft and two helicopters combed areas around the location where the missing plane was believed to have made the last contact and areas where villagers allegedly heard or spotted the plane before it went missing, said Ivan Ahmad Titus, the agency's operation director.

Soelistyo said the plane may not have been equipped with an emergency locator transmitter, a device attached to the so-called black boxes, which emits a signal indicating its position. Director General of Air Transportation Suprasetyo said officials were investigating that possibility.

Monday's aerial search would focus on the sea, while on the ground, soldiers and policemen would search along the 150-mile route of the Masamba-Makassar flight.

The 1981 Canadian-made plane joined Aviastar in January 2014 and underwent its most recent maintenance on Sept. 15.

Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago nation of about 250 million people, has been plagued by transportation accidents in recent years, including plane and train crashes and ferry sinkings. It is one of Asia's most rapidly expanding airline markets, but is struggling to obtain qualified pilots, mechanics, air traffic controllers and modern airport technology.

Monday 05 October 2015

http://www.startribune.com/search-fails-to-locate-missing-indonesian-plane-for-2nd-day/330568291/

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Migrant crisis: Nameless dead with no one to claim them

Shrouded in white, the little girl lies on the ground in the paupers’ section of Lesbos cemetery.

Strangers attend her burial, and she will forever rest next to an unknown woman who died with her.

“Her mother may be alive in Turkey but we have not been able to find a family contact,” says Effi Latsoudi, a member of a volunteer group helping migrants on Lesbos, the Greek island that is a gateway into Europe for thousands of migrants and refugees.

All that is known of the little girl is that she was seven—according to the coroner—and that she died on September 20 trying to cross the Aegean Sea in search of a better future.

Among the group she was apparently travelling with, the Turkish coastguard rescued 20 people and another 24 are believed to be missing.

A bulldozer digs three new graves for the girl, two women and an unidentified man. For want of space, the girl will be buried with one of the women.

Assuming all four are Muslim, the graves are dug facing Mecca.

An Iraqi refugee is present to say a prayer for the dead, assisted by Mustafa, an Egyptian interpreter working for rights group Pro Asyl.

Two women from the Israel-based humanitarian agency IsraAID—an Israeli and a Palestinian—are also present.

The volunteers all help to lower the bodies into the ground.

At the end of the prayer, olive branches are placed on the graves.

Europe should be ashamed

“Europe should be ashamed of forcing these people to risk their lives,” says one of the volunteers.

The continent is grappling with its biggest migration challenge since World War II, with the main surge coming from civil war-torn Syria.

“Many of these people have relatives looking for them and they have no support to find them,” says Latsoudi.

Another five-year-old girl from Syria died a day earlier. She was identified and her family, who are refugees in Germany, will claim her body for burial.

A Christian family from Syria—a couple with two children and a grandmother—lie beneath headstones adorned with flowers.

They died on March 18, 2014, hoping to reach family in Sweden. Their relatives subsequently travelled to Lesbos for the funeral.

But another man from Syria was only identified a year after his death by his wife.

And older graves belonging to Kurds, Iraqis, Afghans who died in past migrant waves are marked only with numbers.

Other more recent victims are “identified” by their date of death.

“Unknown, August 28, 2015.”

“Unknown, September 4, 2015.”

The cemetery of Agios Panteleimonas on the island capital of Mytilene has been the final resting place of migrants who perish in the storm-hit Aegean for years.

Now it is running out of space.

Since the beginning of the year, 11 graves have been added to more than 60 already dug in this section of the cemetery.

And 10 more people await to be buried.

Many more will drown

“This used to be a mass grave for victims of the Second World War. Only refugees and poor Greeks are buried here now,” Latsoudi says.

The local group she represents, Horio Oloi Mazi (‘the village of all together’) was founded in 2012 after 22 migrants died near the island.

It aims to bring “a little respect and humanity” to the dead and to help their relatives seek them out, she says.

More than half a million people have reached Europe via the Mediterranean this year—including more than 310,000 who have landed in Greece, figures from the UN refugee agency show.

But according to Greek authorities, more than 100 migrants have died or gone missing in the last two weeks alone in at least seven boat accidents.

“Now that the northern winds have picked up there will be even more drownings,” says Christos Mavrakidis, the man responsible for the cemetery.

Earlier in the day, another woman and child died when the bottom of the inflatable dinghy they were sailing in fell apart.

Mavrakidis says the bodies should be exhumed after three years — as is done with Greeks who can’t afford to continue paying for a grave — to create space.

However, Muslim burial rites forbid this.

Friday 2 October 2015

http://www.themalaymailonline.com/world/article/migrant-crisis-nameless-dead-with-no-one-to-claim-them

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The families of missing migrants and refugees may never know their fates

In 2015, almost 3,000 people died trying to cross the sea and start a new life in Europe. It was the shocking images of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi – who drowned as his family tried to flee the Syrian conflict for the safe haven of the EU – that sparked a global outcry over this tragedy.

International media attention made it possible for Aylan to be identified, his family informed and his body repatriated to Syria for a decent burial. But the vast majority of migrants and refugees who drown in the Aegean and Mediterranean seas are never identified. Their unnamed bodies are deposited without ritual or respect in graveyards on Europe’s periphery.

This is hardly a new phenomenon. The inhabitants of Greek and Italian islands have been dealing with the human tragedy of finding bodies on their beaches for many years now. One result of this epidemic of anonymous death is that migrants simply disappear from the lives of the families they have left behind. For every body that is washed ashore in Italy or Greece, there is a family waiting for news from their missing loved one. Families want to know what has happened to those who left for Europe: they want to know whether their loved ones are dead or alive.

Searching for answers

As it stands, the states of Europe have consistently failed to provide such answers. That’s why we decided to investigate the outcome of shipwrecks, in an effort to understand what’s being done to arrange the collection, identification, burial and repatriation of migrant bodies at the EU frontier.

Our research focused on the Greek island of Lesbos, which is now the leading entry point to the EU for sea-borne refugees and migrants. What we found was a fundamental lack of planning about how to deal with the problem of dead and missing migrants.

Both EU and national authorities seek to avoid responsibility for the identification or proper burial of the dead by using language that deflects blame. By characterising deaths as “accidents”, or dead migrants as “victims” of smuggling networks national and EU authorities deflect any legal or moral responsibility for the identification or proper burial of the dead. They devote more rhetoric and resources to targeting alleged traffickers than to preventing deaths or addressing their consequences. It’s difficult to imagine that this lack of accountability would be acceptable if the bodies found on beaches were those of Europeans.

Rather than dedicate its considerable political and economic power to this humanitarian challenge, we found that the EU relegates responsibility to local municipal authorities. Although there needs to be a local response, these authorities do not have the resources or capacity to deal with the task at hand. This is where national governments and EU authorities have a responsibility to step in and help to collect data from bodies or contact families who are waiting for news. And there is no consular aid available to most migrants.

While living migrants are some of the most heavily-monitored individuals in the EU, dead migrants merit almost no attention from the authorities.

These factors have led to shocking scenes in cemeteries in Lesbos and Lampedusa. The bodies of unidentified migrants are buried in common graves, only lightly covered by earth. The only markers are broken stones – often recycled from older graves – on which is written the purported nationality of the deceased, a number, and a date.

Since most bodies are unidentified, this nationality is typically based on an informed guess or information from survivors, rather than any real investigation. The techniques of forensic anthropology and DNA identification, which have proven so valuable in identifying those who have disappeared in conflict and political violence in the past, are largely absent here. We found that in some contexts, authorities may collect samples from bodies. But there is rarely anything to compare them with, so this useful tool is largely neglected.

The management of the missing in the aftermath of the war in Bosnia is a good example. In 2001, the International Committee on Missing Persons (ICMP) started using DNA-based identification of the victims of the Srebrenica massacre. Since then, it has identified almost 80% of the approximately 7,000 people who went missing in the biggest mass killing in post-World War II Europe. Austrian authorities are using similar techniques to identify the 71 migrants who suffocated to death in an abandoned lorry earlier this year.

To identify the migrant dead, information needs to be collected from bodies: these data include both documents and information taken from the body - such as identifying marks, and tissue samples that can be used for DNA testing, which can be matched with that of family members. Those who made the journey with them, and survived, may also have valuable information about their identity.

Next, there must be a route for families in migrants' countries of origin to report missing people and provide details about them to the European authorities. Finally, data from families – potentially including DNA – must be matched to the information collected from and about bodies found at the EU’s Mediterranean shores.

Affront to human decency

The current, ad-hoc approach means that even when a family can confirm that their relative has died in a shipwreck, they have no way of locating their loved one’s remains among the unnamed graves. The very few families who have been able to claim remains are those with significant political or economic influence.

One local from Lesbos who we interviewed told us that of one shipwreck in which 22 migrants died, only two bodies were repatriated. This was the result of their family relationship to an Afghan minister, who mobilised the Afghan embassy in Athens. The other victims were buried at the local cemetery. As an 18-year-old from Afghanistan aptly put it: “Only the rich get back, the poor stay here.”

Most governments are now agreed: the images of European cemeteries filling with unidentified bodies are an affront to the conscience of humanity. Both the EU and the national authorities of its member states have a moral and legal obligation; not only to stop the deaths, but also to identify and appropriately manage the dead at their borders.

This can and should be decoupled from the broader and more contentious issue of border control. Organisations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross and the International Commission for Missing Persons have the experience, means and capacity to support EU states to address this urgent humanitarian issue. Now, they must be given the mandate and the resources to do so.

Friday 2 October 2015

http://theconversation.com/the-families-of-missing-migrants-and-refugees-may-never-know-their-fates-48396

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Cape town Fishermen's bodies to be identified

Arrangements are being made for loved ones to identify the remains of the fishermen who died on Sunday when a fishing trawler overturned, the Viking Fishing Company has confirmed.

Group financial director Rory Williams said family members were being contacted and the company would facilitate the "sad task".

"Throughout Monday and Tuesday, bereaved family members and survivors were consoled at the Viking offices with trauma counsellors on stand-by to assist where needed. Company staff have also travelled to Hermanus to identify the deceased," he said.

Nine bodies were recovered and three crewmen were presumed to have drowned after the 42-metre Cape Town fishing trawler reportedly took on water in heavy sea swells 20 nautical miles south of Hangklip (35 nautical miles South East of Cape Point).

The 21-member crew of the MFV Lincoln had to abandon ship after the vessel started keeling over.

Search called off

The search for the last missing men was called off at 18:00 on Tuesday.

"Ongoing counselling will be made available to all families as required, especially to those families where the bodies have not been recovered," Williams said.

Once the bodies have been identified, the company will co-ordinate with families and undertakers to collect the deceased and assist the families with their funeral arrangements, he added.

"All employees are covered by the Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act (COIDA), the company’s Group Accident Policy and additional underwriting benefits covered through the company’s pension and provident funds."

Investigations

The trawler would remain under the South African Maritime Safety Authority’s (Samsa) care while it conducted investigations into the circumstances of the accident.

The vessel had arrived at the company’s quayside premises in the Cape Town harbour after being towed back by a sister ship on Tuesday.

It had been examined within port limits by Samsa to ascertain the extent of the damage prior to entering the harbour, Williams confirmed.

Thursday 1 October 2015

http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Fishermens-bodies-to-be-identified-20150930

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Mecca stampede: Indonesian RI haj team continues pilgrim search, body identification

More bodies of Indonesian haj pilgrims are expected to be identified in the coming days as the government steps up its efforts following the arrival of dozens of containers carrying the victims of a recent stampede in Mina, Saudi Arabia, at hospitals on Wednesday.

As of Wednesday, the Indonesian death toll in the accident had reached 57 of the more than 700 who died, with around 78 Indonesian pilgrims “yet to return to their groups” since the deadly crush, the worst of its kind in 25 years, that occurred on Thursday last week.

The government has yet to confirm the whereabouts of the 78 people, whether they “got lost” after the stampede or were among victims’ bodies currently being examined at dozens of hospitals in Saudi Arabia, especially in Mecca and Medina.

Religious Affairs Ministry spokesman Rosyidin told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday night that five Indonesian pilgrims who were injured during the stampede had been receiving medical treatment at different hospitals in Saudi Arabia, adding that all identified Indonesian victims confirmed dead had been buried in the kingdom. “Tonight [Wednesday] there are several containers that have been opened.

There were also four other containers shipped to Jeddah to be identified at one of the hospitals in the city,” Rosyidin said.The ministry said the government of Indonesia would try its best to find the missing pilgrims and would keep family members updated about the search.

Meanwhile, according to data from the Indonesian haj team in Saudi Arabia, the number of missing pilgrims comprised nine people from Batam, 17 from Surabaya, 40 from Jakarta, 10 from Makassar, six from Solo, one from Balikpapan and one from Lombok. The head of the Religious Affairs Ministry’s Mecca office, Arsyad Hidayat, said on Wednesday that the Indonesian haj team had established three separate groups to expedite attempts to identify bodies unloaded from containers in several cities.

The first team was tasked with counting the number of Indonesian pilgrims yet to return to their groups by visiting all groups of Indonesian pilgrims in Mecca, while the second team would visit hospitals in Mecca and Jeddah to find injured victims. “The third team is to identify bodies of victim at [crisis center] Majma’ Ath-Thawari Bil Mu’aishim by identifying pilgrims’ paperwork [and] haj attributes such as bracelets, shawls and bags,” Arsyad said on Wednesday.

As victims’ bodies have begun to decompose, the third team, according to Arsyad, would cooperate with Saudi Arabia’s disaster victim identification (DVI) unit to get data on pilgrims’ fingerprints recorded when they first arrived in the kingdom. “We hope that with the use of fingerprints it will be easier for us to identify the bodies [of Indonesian pilgrims].

In addition, if we don’t find any haj accessories then we will confirm [the identity of] victims’ bodies with their respective group heads,” Arsyad added.Commenting on authorities’ slow progress in identifying the victims, House of Representatives Deputy Speaker Fahri Hamzah urged the government to exercise more political clout in dealing with the Saudi administration’s closed-lid stance on the resolution of the tragedy.

Fahri, who leads the House’s haj monitoring team, said that Saudi authorities should have provided unrestricted access and open communications to assist in the monitoring and handling of the situation, especially since Indonesia is home to the world’s largest Muslim population and sends the biggest number of pilgrims to Mecca every year.

“Indonesia has not shown the communicative prowess to [confront] Saudi Arabia [about disaster mitigation],” Fahri told reporters during a press conference at the House complex on Wednesday. House Speaker Setya Novanto corroborated his colleague’s claims by saying that Saudi officials had initially prevented the haj monitoring group from entering hospitals, despite having flaunted the Saudi Kingdom’s crest to prove that they were guests of Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud. “Eventually we waited until a car passed by and we snuck in,” Setya said on Wednesday. He claimed not to have seen any Indonesian officials in the hospital that day, despite the presence of several injured Indonesian citizens.

Friday 2 October 2015

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/10/01/ri-haj-team-continues-pilgrim-search-body-identification.html

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Missing body of June 13 Tbilisi flood victim found, identified

A body found in Tbilisi last month has been identified as one of the three missing victims of June 13 Tbilisi flash flood.

DNM tests revealed the remains, found by Georgian police near Tbilisi’s Ponichala area on August 23, were of Elizbar Baghashvili.

The body – found more than two months after the disaster - was spotted in Mtkvari River kilometers from where the taxi he was in was swept away by raging flood waters.

Authorities have continuously been searching for Baghashvili and three others victims who remain missing following the June 13 disaster.

Baghashvili returned to Tbilisi from Moscow only hours before the natural disaster struck. He was in a taxi returning home from a meeting with a friend when the car he was in was swept off the road.

Twenty-two people, including Baghashvili, lost their lives in June 13 flash flood. Of these, three bodies still remain missing.

Furthermore, about 400 people from up to 80 families lost everything they owned as a result of the flood.

On a wider scale, an initial evaluation estimated flood damage on Tbilisi infrastructure exceeded 100 million GEL. Roads linking Tbilisi and several nearby villages and summer settlements still remain blocked.

Thursday 1 October 2015

http://agenda.ge/news/43524/eng

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More remains of MH17 victims found (article in Dutch)

In het oosten van Oekraïne zijn opnieuw stoffelijke resten gevonden van slachtoffers van vlucht MH17. De stoffelijke resten worden met een lijnvlucht van Charkov overgebracht naar Schiphol, maakte het ministerie van Veiligheid en Justitie vrijdag bekend.

Tot dusver gingen stoffelijke resten met een militair toestel naar Eindhoven waarna ze in een konvooi werden overgebracht naar de Korporaal van Oudheusden Kazerne bij Hilversum voor identificatie. De ceremonie is gewijzigd ,,omdat het identificatieproces grotendeels is afgerond''.

Een achtkoppig Nederlands team is in Oekraïne om de stoffelijke resten, persoonlijke bezittingen en resten van het vliegtuig op te halen. De overblijfselen zijn gevonden nabij de plek waar het toestel neerkwam, in de buurt van Hrabove, en werden sinds 1 mei verzameld door de plaatselijke autoriteiten. Inwoners van de dorpen rond het rampgebied kunnen op vaste punten gevonden spullen blijven inleveren.

Medewerkers van het Landelijk Team Forensische Opsporing brengen de stoffelijke resten naar Schiphol. Wanneer dat gebeurt, is nog niet bekend. Daar vindt - zonder media - een gedenkmoment plaats. De marechaussee zorgt voor de ceremoniële ontvangst. Daarvoor is de familie van de twee nog niet geïdentificeerde Nederlandse slachtoffers uitgenodigd.

Op 2 mei vloog een militair toestel voor het laatst kisten met stoffelijke resten naar Eindhoven. Dat was de tiende keer dat er menselijke resten werden overgevlogen naar Nederland. De officiële bergingsmissie was in die week afgerond.

Thursday 1 October 2015

http://www.telegraaf.nl/binnenland/24538777/__Opnieuw_stoffelijke_resten_MH17_gevonden__.html

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Anniversary of Austin Dam disaster today

Today marks the 104th anniversary of perhaps the single greatest disaster in the history of this area of the Twin Tiers — the failure of a concrete dam and subsequent destruction of the towns of Austin and Costello on Sept. 30, 1911, in Potter County, Pa.

Pressure from about 250 million gallons of water broke the dam, which was built two years before to supply water for the Bayless Pulp and Paper Co. The dam stood 50 feet high and was more than 500 feet long — it had been dubbed by some as “the dam that could not break.” The water from the dammed-up Freeman Run swept up logs and other debris, creating a grinding wall of devastation. A total of 78 people are officially reported killed in the disaster, although it is believed by historians that more people — possibly traveling businessmen, visitors to the town, lumbermen who had brought in logs to the Bayless Co. — perished in the disaster and their bodies were not found.

Austin was a small city of 3,000 people in 1911.

Indeed, newspaper dispatches even two days after the flood reveal how murky information was in the aftermath, given the communications abilities and the state of emergency management response of that day.

A headline on the front page of the Oct. 2, 1911, edition of the Olean Evening Times (the dam broke on a Saturday; the Evening Times was not printed on Sundays) stated: “Official Count Gives Death List as 250, But Citizens Claim It Will Reach 550.”

Rescuers at the scene expressed certainty that the death toll would be in the hundreds, and it was feared that great piles of debris would have to be burned — along with the bodies it was assumed they covered — because of concerns about disease.

An editorial in the Evening Times read:

“The nation stands appalled at the fearful calamity that has overwhelmed Austin. Not since the fateful Johnstown flood of 1889 has there been such a holocaust of death in a single accident in this country. Coming so close to Olean, this catastrophe brought with a terrible shock to all residents of this city. Many of them had relatives in the stricken city, and many more of them had friends whose safety has not yet been established.

“The suspense here yesterday was poignant, and every additional report but added to the grief of the waiting people. Practically no definite information could be secured and only such news as filtered in from Keating Summit and other nearby places, inadequate in respect to the names of the dead or the survivors, came to relieve their anxiety. But in most cases, this but added to the suspense.

“Everything that can be done to relieve the situation is being done. Nothing that can mitigate the sorrow and horror of the calamity is being left undone. All the necessary medical aid is upon the scene, the homeless people are being placed in the homes of hospitable neighbors, and at present there is food amply sufficient to meet the needs of the sufferers.”

A permanent memorial was dedicated in September 2013 to the people who lost their lives in the flood. The memorial marker, in Austin Dam Memorial Park, is made of light-colored stone with the names of the deceased etched in black upon its face. The monument stands directly in front of the dam as a solemn memorial to those who lost their lives that day.

Thursday 1 October 2015

http://www.oleantimesherald.com/news/article_de892bd6-672e-11e5-9324-13d1c038ece3.html?mode=image&photo=0

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With 1,200 missing persons in Orange County, authorities reach out to families for DNA

For over 20 years, the identity of a human femur that washed ashore in Seal Beach and a jaw bone found elsewhere on the coast remained a mystery.

Meanwhile, the family of Percy Ray Carson wondered in anguish for two decades what had happened to the 26-year-old Long Beach resident and Army veteran, who disappeared while swimming off the coast of Huntington Beach on July 19, 1992.

It wasn’t until June that authorities connected the DNA of the remains with that of Carson’s family, identifying the bones as his.

Although Carson’s case was finally solved, another 1,200 active missing persons cases remain in Orange County, according to the Sheriff’s Department. About 100 human remains have been collected but never identified, sheriff’s Lt. Jeff Hallock said.

For the first time, Orange County coroner and law enforcement officials are reaching out to people with missing family members in a public event Saturday, encouraging them to give DNA in the hopes that improving DNA testing technologies will lead to answers.

At the event, titled “Identify the Missing,” law enforcement and forensic officials will speak with relatives who wish to file or add to missing persons reports, submit DNA cheek swabs, and provide medical and dental information, photographs and fingerprints of their loved ones. Authorities can use the records to search The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System’s federal database, which has information on 10,000 unidentified bodies.

“We’re providing a venue that’s going to encompass all of the law enforcement and community professionals that families would need in this situation,” Allison O’Neal, the Orange County supervising deputy coroner, said after a press conference announcing the program Tuesday.

Representatives from several county police agencies, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the California Department of Justice, National Missing and Unidentified Persons System and the Mexican consulate in Santa Ana are expected to participate.

Similar events have been held in Michigan, New York, Texas and Missouri.

Coroner officials said they regularly send remains to the California Department of Justice for DNA testing to close the books on the thousands missing and unidentified persons cases they see annually.

“We’re resubmitting material all the time on these older cases to try to make a match,” said Tiffany Williams, a senior deputy coroner.

However, many missing people go unreported, officials said. Sometimes family members are afraid of how DNA samples would be used, but assistant chief deputy coroner Bruce Lyle said the DNA will only be used to help identify remains.

The new outreach approach is the result of meetings with Southern California coroner offices, where some agreed to hold similar events in the coming months.

The San Bernardino County coroner’s office held theirs in June, but turnout was reportedly low, Sheriff’s officials said. They said they hope to avoid that in Orange County by spreading the word.

At San Bernardino County’s event, a Redlands mother filed a missing persons report for the daughter she had not seen in 12 years. A detective discovered that the daughter was OK and living in Los Angeles.

Sheila Tubbs, of Newport Beach, hopes to find the same resolution for her brother, Gary Patton, who went missing during a short trip to Mexico.

Patton, of Westminster, was 64 years old when he went missing in September 2013 while on a three-day trip to photograph whales and a fishing tournament in Baja California, Mexico.

They filed a missing persons report with the Westminster Police Department, passed out fliers near where he possibly went missing, hired a private investigator and placed ads in Mexican newspapers, to no avail.

Tubbs said she and several of her siblings will submit to cheek swabs on Saturday.

“The family wants to get closure if something did happen to him,” Tubbs said. “I’m trying to be the eternal optimist.”

30 September 2015

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/missing-685262-persons-county.html

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Austria migrant truck tragedy: relatives trying to identify their familymembers

Omar Abd-Mugeeth stared at his TV in Dubai. He felt hot, then sick. Police had found an abandoned refrigerator truck on an Austrian roadside with at least 50 dead aboard.

“ Mahmoud…my little brother. I knew he was one of them,” said Mr. Abd-Mugeeth, a 44-year-old Iraqi who last week traveled nearly 3,000 miles to try to confirm the fate of his brother and his brother’s wife.

Austrian authorities eventually extracted 71 decomposing bodies from the truck last month, one in a string of recent tragedies that has put the migration crisis at the top of Europe’s political agenda. Undertaking risky travel over land and sea has drawn global attention to the desperation of families fleeing war-torn and impoverished lands in the largest mass migration since World War II.

Mr. Abd-Mugeeth and other relatives now wait as a lab in the Austrian capital processes DNA samples to find matches with the tissue of victims who would otherwise be nearly impossible to identify. He flew Thursday to Vienna and then drove to meet with police in the Burgenland region, where the truck was found. En route, he stared past cornfields and small medieval-era houses, crying silently. “My mother,” he said, “she is crushed.”

His 29-year-old brother Mahmoud Abd-Mugeeth had married Zina Kaylany, 24, shortly after they had met at a wedding five years ago, Mr. Abd-Mugeeth said. It was love at first sight. “She was a very strong and respected woman,” he said. “Mahmoud adored her.” The couple lived in Baghdad, where his brother’s wife, nicknamed “Light Eyes,” sang for her husband at home.

As Mr. Abd-Mugeeth waited to speak with authorities at the Eisenstadt police station, he asked officers, “How big was the truck? How many meters?” No one could tell him exactly. On a piece of paper, Mr. Abd-Mugeeth drew a square in red ink with small circles inside.

“Seventy one,” he said. “My brother. No space.” Rising suddenly, he stood on one leg, holding his arms up. “This is how he was standing,” he said. Then Mr. Abd-Mugeeth fell back into his chair and rested his head in his hands.

His brother Mahmoud was an Iraqi army officer, a Sunni who had grown fearful that neither he nor his country could protect his wife and family from violent extremists, according to Mr. Abd-Mugeeth and other family members.

Mahmoud Abd-Mugeeth researched flights, spoke with friends who had already left and discussed possible routes with his wife, Zina, who had two brothers already living in Germany.

In mid-August, the couple decided to leave. Mahmoud Abd-Mugeeth didn’t tell his commanding officers, family members said. They flew out of Baghdad, traveling in a group that included Zina’s sister and a brother. They arrived in Izmir, a city on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast.

Mr. Abd-Mugeeth said he asked his brother to stay in Turkey, where other family members lived. But his brother told him his wife and her two siblings wanted to join their brothers in Germany.

“Mahmoud would follow Zina anywhere,” Mr. Abd-Mugeeth said. “I tried to talk him into staying in Turkey, I warned him that the trip might be dangerous, that he didn’t know what to expect, but he wouldn’t listen.” Mahmoud Abd-Mugeeth planned to start a money transfer and exchange business in Germany, his brother said, similar to the one that Mr. Abd-Mugeeth was running in Dubai.

Before leaving Izmir, the group left their passports with relatives. A smuggler recommended by friends who had already made it to central Europe told them they would get new identities. Many Iraqi migrants are told it is easier to gain asylum in European countries by changing their identities and using, for example, Syrian passports.

Mahmoud Abd-Mugeeth also left $10,000 with his older brother, who would transfer the savings when he arrived in Germany.

The group traveled by boat to Greece, where they found another smuggler who drove them by van through Macedonia and Serbia, as far as the border with Hungary. On this leg of the trip, Mr. Abd-Mugeeth said, he and his mother were in constant contact with Mahmoud through calls and text messages.

‘“In the beginning, he was very happy,” Mr. Abd-Mugeeth said, showing a picture of his smiling brother as he posed at a town on the Greek shore.

As they progressed deeper into Europe, Mr. Abd-Mugeeth said, his brother no longer smiled in photos he sent. “I could see it in his eyes,” Mr. Abd-Mugeeth said. “He had a scared look.”

In one of the last pictures sent, he said, his brother’s face was shaded in a tree’s shadow—behind him, other migrants sat on the ground and talked while others slept amid strewed trash and discarded leftovers.

Mr. Abd-Mugeeth last spoke with his brother on Aug. 25—two days before the abandoned truck was discovered by authorities. His brother had told him he was worried about his wife sleeping on the ground in the Serbian forest, Mr. Abd-Mugeeth said. His brother also confided the couple hadn’t eaten for two days, except for some foraged fruit.

Mr. Abd-Mugeeth said he told his brother to return to their family in Turkey, that there was no point to more suffering. But his brother refused, he said, saying he had spoken to a smuggler who had promised to retrieve them that evening at the Serbia-Hungary border and take them to Germany for €1,800 (about $2,022) a person.

“I should have been harder on him,” Mr. Abd-Mugeeth said. “I should never have let him go.”

The group was expected in Germany by the Kaylany brothers—Ahmed, 28, and Sarmad, 25—who were waiting to welcome their sister Zina, her husband, Mahmoud Abd-Mugeeth, another sister and a brother, Ali Amer.

Mr. Amer had texted his brothers on Aug. 24, saying the group was waiting at the Serbia-Hungary border for a transport. Don’t worry, he said.

Sitting in their apartment in Aachen, a small town on the border with the Netherlands, the Kaylany brothers said Sunday that they heard nothing for a week after that message. They had tried calling. At first, the phone rang. But after awhile, even the ring tone went silent.

“The world fell apart,” said Ahmed Kaylany, sitting on a green velvet sofa, elbows resting on his knees. “It is as if God chose to take the best people in the world. They wouldn’t even have hurt an ant.”

The two brothers now spend their time waiting—for a decision by German authorities on their asylum applications, filed in May, and for a call from Austrian authorities about the DNA samples they sent out a week ago. For weeks, they have had trouble sleeping and eating.

“The wait is the worst part,” Sarmad Kaylany said, tears in his eyes. “I only think about my family, my parents back home who still have hope…My little sisters, my brother.”

Austrian investigators said working with frustrated and distraught relatives has heightened the emotional challenge for officers working on the case. “We see people doing all they can to provide us with DNA samples, some traveling across half of the world,” a police spokesman said.

Providing relatives with a clear answer is taking much longer than anyone wants, the spokesman said, and it could drag on for several more months because of the forensic complexity of the case, as well as the logistics of communicating with foreign authorities.

“Our priority has to be to not, not ever, make a mistake,” the spokesman said.

Authorities have arrested six people in the case, including the alleged driver.

. At the Eisenstadt police station, an officer arrived to speak with Mr. Abd-Mugeeth. A second man asked him to open his mouth so he could take a swab of saliva. He looked at Mr. Abd-Mugeeth’s passport and wrote down his name, birth date, and address on a form.

Mr. Abd-Mugeeth asked when he would get an answer about his DNA sample. “In two to three weeks,” the officer said.

The officer started looking through some papers in front of him, then pulled out a photograph of a head scarf from the stack.

“Have you seen this before?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” Mr. Abd-Mugeeth said.



The officer showed him a picture of a small pouch. Mr. Abd-Mugeeth flicked through the photos his brother had sent on his phone. In one shot, of his brother and his wife in the forest in Serbia, Mr. Abd-Mugeeth saw that she wore the same pouch around her hips.

“And look,” Mr. Abd-Mugeeth said, pointing at his phone. “It’s the head scarf. It’s the same.”

The officer pulled out one last photo that showed a golden necklace with Kurdish letters.

“It’s Zina’s, 100%.” Mr. Abd-Mugeeth said. “The letters say ‘Mahmoud.’ ”

Mr. Abd-Mugeeth asked whether he could see the bodies of his brother and sister-in-law, or at least pictures of them. The officer said he couldn’t until the bodies were identified.

“You would not be able to recognize them,” the officer said. “The bodies are not visually recognizable.”

“But her hair color,” Mr. Abd-Mugeeth said. “You must have been able to see her hair color.”

The police officer looked down at the table.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “But no, we couldn’t even recognize her hair color.”

Mr. Abd-Mugeeth said he had felt as though his brother’s presence lingered after the truck’s discovery. He could see on Facebook that his brother was online for several days after they last talked, a sign his phone must have been in use. But his brother didn’t reply to messages.

When Mr. Abd-Mugeeth called, no one answered.

Mr. Abd-Mugeeth said he was convinced smugglers took away the phone—which police never found—and forced his brother and the others into the truck.

“Mahmoud was very jealous,” he said. “He would not have wanted his wife to be in a place like that with so many men and so little space. He would never have entered that truck without being very scared.”

After the couple had learned early in their marriage that they couldn’t conceive children, Mr. Abd-Mugeeth said, his brother’s wife offered a divorce so her husband could remarry and have children with someone else.

“He told her he loved her, and that he would always stay with her, with or without children,” Mr. Abd-Mugeeth said. “He said…that he would live with her and die with her. And he did.”

Wednesday 30 September 2015

http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-month-after-migrant-truck-tragedy-a-grim-wait-1443576982

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North Korea: Rason flood casualties ten times official figures

Nearly 400 people have reportedly died from torrential rain that swept up residents in Rason, North Hamgyong Province. This is ten times the figure officially announced by North Korea, which is believed to have distorted numbers in fear that the international community would criticize the Kim Jong Un leadership for its lack of readiness against natural disasters, Daily NK sources reported.

“Damage from the downpours was contained to Rason in the Sonbong area and not elsewhere,” a source privy to North Korean affairs in China told Daily NK. “It was only in the Sonbong area where it rained a lot. Although the state reported 40 were killed, after looking into the matter those figures are over 400.”

An additional source in China with ties to North Korea confirmed this news.

Images featured in the Party-run Rodong Sinmun showed buildings being reconstructed, but on the larger scale, the damage was immense with entire villages being swept away, leading to a massive loss of lives, according to the source.

“The sudden rise in water levels swept up not only residents in the area but taxi drivers, traders, and even truck drivers from China. Those bodies have not even been recovered yet,” he asserted.

“Saying that 40 lives were lost is sheer nonsense.”

Soldiers mobilized from surrounding areas are currently working on rebuilding the hard hit city, which has been sealed off from the public. Roughly 45,000 soldiers are on site, reflecting the magnitude of devastation in Rason.

“The soldiers that have been mobilized are storm troops that specialize in building roads, bridges, and fixing houses,” the source said. “They have cut off the entrance to Sonbong to block cars coming from Wonjong Customs House, and people cannot enter at all. All vehicles that go through customs have to make a detour toward the Tumen River,” the source explained.

He went on to speculate that Pyongyang downplayed the numbers in an effort to deflect any criticism from the global community. While it is more common to see dozens of lives lost in a natural disaster, much higher numbers would be a sure sign of North Korea’s lack of readiness. The leadership, the source surmised, likely did not want to take any chances in acknowledging this reality.

Wednesday 30 September 2015

http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?num=13488&cataId=nk01500

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