Agonising wait for the missing in Philippine wastelands

In the grieving, grey wastelands that were once bustling towns on tropical Philippine islands, thousands of typhoon survivors are enduring an agonising wait of hope and denial for news of loved ones.

Nearly 1,800 people are officially listed as missing after Super Typhoon Haiyan swept across the central Philippines just over a month ago, and not knowing what happened to them is for some relatives nearly as painful as confirmation that they died.

Francis Batula, 35, buried his aunt and four other relatives in shallow graves outside their badly damaged home in the coastal city of Tacloban, where giant storm surges wiped out thousands of homes as well as schools, churches and other places serving as evacuation centres.

His aunt was in her house facing the Pacific Ocean, along with her husband and daughter. The aunt?s body was found but not those of the other two, and Batula refuses to acknowledge that his uncle and cousin are likely dead.

We are still hoping that they are safe, but that they can't contact us. Maybe there's no (phone) signal where they are now, Batula told AFP after walking past the graves of his five other relatives.

Batula said he and other relatives had paid fruitless visits to neighbouring communities to ask if people had seen his uncle and cousin, and expressed anger at authorities for not doing enough to search for the missing.

?All they are doing is asking for the names of the missing people. They say they will report it. But when you ask them what they will do to help you find them, there is no concrete answer? they say it's not a priority right now, he said.

The government insists it is doing all it can to find the missing but, like virtually all other aspects of the disaster, the magnitude of the response needed is overwhelming.

The number of people confirmed killed is 5,936, and just the task of dealing with the dead has been too much to handle properly, with countless bodies having been dumped into mass graves without being properly identified.

The typhoon on November 8 generated tsunami-like storm surges that powered through dozens of coastal communities on the islands of Leyte and Samar, and piles of rubble from destroyed homes still lie in the streets.

As that debris is being cleared by cash-for-work clean-up crews of survivors and just a few bulldozers, bodies continue to be found.

Amid the chaos, there are haunting messages for the lost.

Churchgoers browse lists of missing people and look at posters appealing for help that are pinned up to the entrances of cathedrals.

At the Santo Nino church in Tacloban, a photocopied photo of a three-year-old boy hangs on a notice board.

Alongside, a handwritten message says the boy was wearing an orange life vest and diapers, but no shirt, when he went missing on November 8. The phone numbers of five people are listed for anyone with information to call.

The Red Cross is playing an important role in trying to find the missing.

It sends tracing teams into communities to look for people after they are reported by relatives or friends as having disappeared.

One of the charity organisation?s team leaders in Tacloban, Iris Recto, said her small team had found at least eight people a day over three weeks, with a record daily success of 29, by searching in evacuation centres and communities.

But Recto said the Red Cross cases mainly involved relatives overseas or elsewhere in the Philippines reporting missing people. The Red Cross typically finds people who had lost their phones or were living in an area without a phone signal, so had been unable to call relatives outside the disaster areas, according to Recto.

For the 1,779 people listed by the government as missing, they have been reported by relatives and local officials in the communities where they lived.

And the fate of many people swept out to sea or buried anonymously in mass graves will likely never be known.



National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council spokesman Reynaldo Balido told AFP that it would not declare any of the missing as dead until local officials officially made that pronouncement.

This sometimes happened one year after the disaster, even without an official identification of the body.

But Balido acknowledged that in the history of tracking the frequent typhoons, earthquakes and other disasters that plague the Philippines, the figures often permanently end up as "dead and missing"

He cited the case of Typhoon Bopha, the world?s deadliest storm last year, which tore across the southern Philippines on December 4, and officially killed 902 people.

But more than a year later, relatives of 934 people still listed as missing continue to live in a tortuous limbo.

Tuesday 10 December 2013

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50 years later, witnesses, families recall Flight 214 crash

While residents were returning from evening church services, finishing up a late supper or watching “The Ed Sullivan Show,” five airliners were circling above Elkton, waiting for the OK to fly the 44 miles home to Philadelphia.

On that night, Dec. 8, 1963, Flight 214, a Pan American Airways Boeing 707, was returning to the U.S. from from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Onboard: 73 passengers and eight crew members.

Most passengers were returning from vacation. There were three groups of golfers, the alumni from Northeastern University who took a winter vacation every year, two honeymoon couples and a young woman bringing her infant son to meet his grandparents for the first time.

There was a nurse, an employee of Campbell Soup, a furniture dealer, a real estate broker and several dentists.

Back home, there were husbands and wives, sons and daughters, sister and brothers and friends. There was the airplane stewardess who changed her flight plans at the last minute.

And in Elkton, an unusual winter thunderstorm rattled the small town with pouring rain, wind and flashes of lightning. Then, at 8:58 p.m., Flight 214 broadcasted to Philadelphia.

“MAYDAY. Clipper 214 is going down in flames.”

Local residents became witnesses, reporting they saw lightning strike the plane and send an orange fireball to the ground. Those waiting for loved ones to come home heard erroneous reports of a crash in Newark, Del., and began to worry.

It was the end of the flight, but the beginning of a hellacious series of days.

This Sunday marks 50 years since the fatal crash. Decades later, the memories are still fresh for Elkton residents, although many who witnessed that night are now gone, and family and friends are still trying to find closure.

The late fall of 1963 started off as an exciting time for Cecil County.

The first commercial radio, WSER, had started to broadcast. Towns were abuzz about the Northeastern Expressway that President John F. Kennedy came to dedicate in a ceremony on Nov. 14.

Then, with Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22, the year turned bleak. Just when the county thought it couldn’t get any worse, Dec. 8 arrived to deliver the largest aviation disaster in Maryland’s history, said Mike Dixon, of the Historical Society of Cecil County.

“In a community’s history, there are lots of things that add to the heritage of that place. And for the generation that was alive back at that time, albeit a catastrophic moment, this is one of them,” Dixon said.

The Historical Society keeps a brown file folder on Flight 214 filled with article clippings, death certificates and official documents relating the crash. There is even a portion of the plane on display. Besides the requests for information on genealogy or old homes, local historians receive the most inquirers about Flight 214.

Through work the society is doing now, future generations will have more information available regarding Flight 214. When relatives, friends and local witnesses gather in memory of the crash this weekend, members of the historical society will meet them privately to record their recollections.

“Our obligation is to document history, and this was a sad one, but a formative one,” Dixon said.

The weather that Sunday night was an odd storm — rain, sleet, thunder and lightning — more appropriate for a sticky summer night. Driving north on Route 213, Don Hash, then 25, was returning from a police call in Chesapeake City when he saw lightning in the shape of a wishbone, followed seconds later by the blast of a bright orange cloud and a falling airplane wing.

Hash, out of the police academy only 18 months, was one of three troopers on patrol that night, along with a handful of the sheriff’s deputies. He immediately headed in the direction of the flames and was the first person on the scene.

“It was just a bunch of debris strewn over the area there, I don’t recall any suitcases or anything like that. It was a muddy night because it had been raining awful hard. It was just one muddy mess,” Hash said.

The area where the plane crashed off Delancy Road is now the neighborhood of Turnquist, but was then only populated by a few farm houses. Residents recalled their yards lighting up and houses shaking.

“They said, ‘Daddy come quick, there’s a falling star’ and I said, ‘That’s no falling star, that’s a plane,’” the Rev. Howard Van Sice, who was with his children at their West Main Street home in Elkton at the time of the crash, said in a 1983 interview with the Whig.

Mae Grant, who was visiting her parents with her 3-month-old son at the Delancy Road family home at the time of the crash, recalled the dramatic moment in another previous interview with the Whig.

“Everything outside lit up and as soon as I looked up I could see the plane on fire. I remember my dad yelling, ‘Run,’ and I remember saying, ‘Run where?’”

Before 9 p.m., Rosemary Culley, the lone emergency service dispatcher on that night, issued a couple routine airchecks. Then she hollered loud and clear over the crackling radio waves: “Station 3 you have a plane crash.”

Elkton Chief Edgar Slaughter was in charge from the scene that night. Despite those who had rushed to the scene with him, he needed more help. Over the radio, Culley came in again: “All available ambulances respond to a plane crash at Delancy Road in Elkton.”

Hampton Scott, then 24, saw the plane go down from his home on Bow Street. At first, he thought the glow was from a distant barn fire. Then the wing of the plane rotated in the sky as it was falling. A member of the local fire company, Scott raced to the firehouse, about a block away.

Although the initial impact of the plane created a great blaze, by the time first responders arrived at the scene, the force of the plane falling to earth had buried pockets of fire into the ground. Once there, responders realized there weren’t going to be any survivors.

Scott left the scene to report to his job as a mail worker at 5 a.m. on Monday. He had three young daughters at home, ages 4, 3 and 1. He tried to keep in the Christmas spirit for his girls.

“It was certainly one of the worst things I ever saw. I certainly can’t imagine anything worse,” Scott said.

For people who grew up in America between WWII and the Korean War, aviation was a thrilling new frontier, explains Thomas Anthony, director of the University of Southern California’s Aviation Safety and Security Program.

“Aviation is inherently interesting because it involves almost a sublime and unexpected activity,” he said.

With its swift speeds and glamorous allure, the 1958 debut of the Boeing 707 is generally credited with ushering the Jet Age, which peaked in the 1960s. It was the way to travel in style, equipped the way a railroad club car would be with a lounge and other comforts.

In 50 years though, Anthony points out air travel safety has increased “phenomenally.” There are now about 0.2 fatal accidents per million departures on commercial air carriers.

In the 1960s, traveling by air, although popular, was not without danger.

Alongside the story of the Elkton crash, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported it was the seventh disaster involving a Boeing 707. The first, in November 1962, happened when a Los Angeles-bound Varig Airlines 707 struck a mountain. Another was due to a bomb, and another due to a failed landing attempt.

Cecil County witnessed the dangers of the Jet Age relatively early.

Memorial Day 1947, Eastern Airlines Flight 605 fell from the sky with 53 people on board, landing in a wooded area off Principio Road outside Port Deposit, according to records at the Historical Society. Even more than 60 years later, the cause of that crash remains a mystery.

Flight 605 was one of the worst fatal crashes in Maryland history, but nothing compared to Flight 214.

Still, if there was anyone to trust in the skies in 1963, it was George F. Knuth, then 45 and pilot of Flight 214.

Back in January 1949, passengers credited “the coolness” of Knuth for saving the lives of 33 persons on board, according to an UP article published at the time. On a clear day, Knuth was piloting a Pan Am Constellation “Monarch of the Skies” when a small private plane collided into its backend 3,500-feet above Long Island.

Knuth landed his plane with the other plane still attached. He credited his team for the smooth emergency landing. The passengers said Capt. Knuth, later called a “hero pilot,” was being too modest.

“He never lost control for an instant. After the collision we dropped slightly, as though we had hit an air pocket. Then we went on and made the landing as though nothing had happened,” said one passenger, D. E. Wilson, of Peekskill, N.Y., in the article.

Carol Knuth Sakoian is reminded of her father whenever she smells a cigar or hears classical music.

George F. Knuth was an Iowa farm boy who originally wanted to be a science teacher, but then joined the military to fly planes. He always had a big garden, even when living on Long Island. The family would have meals with six or eight vegetables at a time, even eggplant, which was then considered kind of unusual.

In his 22 years with Pan Am, Knuth had 17,049 hours total flying, with 2,890 hours flying a Boeing 707.

Knuth usually piloted international flights around the globe, meaning he was away for weeks at a time. When his son was born, the last addition to the three Knuth girls, he decided to take shorter trips. Flying to Puerto Rico meant several days at home before several days away. That November, the family had even been able to travel to Antigua for a short vacation.

On the night of Dec. 8, 1963, Carol, then 16, was studying in her room for a French test. It was a cold night and snowing. Around 11 p.m., she heard the front door open and her mother, Elizabeth, walk to the neighbor’s house.

The news of the crash — complete with pilot’s name — had been broadcast on the evening news. One of the neighbors, a physician, came back to the house with Elizabeth to administer a sedative. Members of the Airline Pilots Association then arrived in the middle of the night to guard the house against the press.

“The worst part of the night was the constant realization that is was true,” Carol said. “When I finally went to sleep, I dreamed it wasn’t true. I guess our minds do that.”

Weeks after the crash, Carol received two Christmas gifts that her father had purchased before the crash: a copy of “Robinson Crusoe” and 45-rpm records of folksinger Burl Ives, which he thought was popular music.

It wasn’t Elvis Presley, but she still has the records.

If Christmas 1963 had been like any other year, Jeff Gilbert’s father would have covered the living room with sheets to keep the kids from peeking.

But on Dec. 8, Gilbert had to call his grandparents to tell them his parents, Robert and Joyce, had died on Flight 215. His father, a dentist in Allentown, Pa., was giving a lecture at the University of Puerto Rico and brought his wife.

Gilbert remembers his mother as jovial, with a good sense of humor. His father a mixture of professional and thoughtful. Although a dedicated worker, his father always made time to spend summers at a cottage in Avalon, N.J., with the family.

Gilbert, then 15, was watching “Bonanza” with his younger sister when the news broke there had been a plane crash. He called Pan Am and the company confirmed his parents were on the flight.

When Gilbert finally went to bed that night he remembers looking out his bedroom window and seeing neighbors silently standing in the front yard watching the house.

Life was different without parents.

“I still like Christmas very much,” he said. “It’s different when you don’t share it with a mother and a father, but I love Christmas. I try to make Christmas for my wife and kids a special time.”

By morning, gruesome details were visible in Elkton. First responders and police from throughout Cecil County had responded to the call, along with men from the Bainbridge Naval Training Center.

“Vacation clothing, some hanging in trees and some lying neatly folded on hangers in a ditch. The four men’s suits on the right had no texture, they were charred to ash and disintegrated at the touch of a finger,” read a photo caption published in the Cecil Whig in the days following the crash.

Cecil County had experienced its own loss when Steward Godwin, of the North East Fire Company, collapsed at the scene about 1:30 a.m. on Monday. He died of a heart attack.

The crash site, centered in a field of the Berry Family Farm, covered a four-mile area. Debris, pieces of the plane and oil were scattered through the field, in trees and on cars and houses.

On the seventh day, a memorial service was held at the crash site.

It would be two more days until Dr. Russell S. Fisher, state medical examiner, identified all the bodies. Fingerprints, dental records and personal effects found nearby were the primary means of identification. For more difficult cases, Fisher and his team reconstructed faces as best possible using mannequins.

The recovery process took as many hearses and removal vehicles as possible, recalled Don Hicks, whose family owns Hicks Home for Funerals in Elkton. Able to drive his family’s gray station wagon, Hicks, then only 13, drove remains from the crash site to the temporary Red Cross station and morgue set up at the armory.

It was a natural response for the town to come together in a time of need.

“You weren’t obligated to do it, but you wanted to do it, you wanted to help your neighbor in need,” he said. His father coordinated many arrangements for families coming in to pick up the remains of loved ones. His mother, a volunteer with the Red Cross, was there to welcome families with coffee and sandwiches.

Henry Shaffer, then 16, cut school for a couple days to volunteer at the crash site as a firefighter. He responded Sunday night after hearing the call to come in over the radio while working on a school report about the assassination of President Kennedy. In the days following, he slept at a relative’s home on Delancy Road so he could stay close.

Thinking about the incident today, Shaffer questions whether it was easier for him to handle the situation than the older men in the fields, those who likely questioned what would happen to their families if they were killed in a horrific accident.

“As I look back on it now, I have to say that maybe I receive some solace or comfort now in having assisted with the recovery of the crash victims’ bodies, as difficult as it was for me then,” he said.

It was a 12-day recovery process. When the area was finished, 16 truckloads of wreckage were taken to Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, D.C., for investigators with the Civil Aeronautics Board to reassemble to determine the cause of the crash.

Scientists said it was “improbable” for lightning to have caused the crash, Delaware’s News Journal reported. If lightning was the cause of a fatal crash, it would be a first in the history of U.S. commercial aviation.

The then director of DuPont’s engineering physics research laboratories told the paper he had once been on a plane struck by lightning and those inside the cabin hardly noticed; the metal skin of the airplane carried the lightning’s current.

“I can’t believe the possibility that a combination of circumstances caused a lightning bolt to break the airplane up,” the scientist said.

Turbulence, unusually fast and heavy icing and the possibility of an insufficient lift in the jet’s wings were all theorized as causes.

It would later be released that the crash happened when lightning ignited a reserve fuel tank, resulting in the left outer wing exploding and loss of control.

The aircraft was destroyed by explosion, impact and fire. The accident is considered the worst lightning strike death toll. In response to the findings, officials called for all commercial jets flying in the U.S. to be installed with lightning discharge wicks.

Following the crash, Rueben Miller Jr. came down from Pennsylvania to speak with investigators and collect the remains of his sister, Joyce Gilbert, and her husband, Robert. Outside the armory, Miller, then 35, met a first responder who had been working in the field all night.

“He said, ‘I can assure you that the remains that you get back will be the remains of your loved ones,’” Miller recalled. First responders later found and returned Joyce and Robert’s wedding rings to the family.

This weekend, more than 20 of Joyce and Robert’s family members will visit Elkton. The Historical Society expects hundreds to visit this weekend to pay their respects and record their memories.

“It’s certainly painful to relive some of it, but maybe it’s freeing at the same time,” said Richard Sherman, who lost his father, Arnold, in the crash. Sherman and more than a dozen of his family members are coming this weekend.

The day of the crash, Arnold was returning with friends from a golf trip. He worked long hours and rarely took a vacation, especially without his wife. Sherman, then 15, was home with his mother and younger brother in Wynnewood, Pa., when he heard the news of the plane crash over the radio.

Some years, the anniversary of his father’s death falls during Hanukkah. In memory of his father, Sherman will light a yahrzeit candle. He likes to remember the simple moments he spent with his father, watching TV and eating pizza.

“I think he would want us to be brave and move forward, and be sensitive and thoughtful,” Sherman said. “I think we have honored his memory in how we live our lives in a good way.”

Chris Knuth, son to the pilot, has found solace in digging through the details of the crash. He was just 6 years old in 1963. “Finding out how many other people were affected by it, my sorrows weren’t really my own anymore,” Chris said.

Like other family members of victims, Chris said he was grateful to the people of Elkton for responding to the tragedy. Chris has visited Elkton several times to meet with witnesses and visit the crash site, now marked with a commemorative stone.

He has few memories of his father — the garden, sitting on his lap at Christmas dinner, watching him ride a bike — but he’s been able to feel connected to him by traveling to places his father went.

There was never a second thought about putting the Knuth children on planes after the crash. Pan Am provided the family with passes to travel. They saw the Taj Mahal and the Buddhist temples in Thailand. They sometimes got the thrill of traveling first class.

Still, there are times when bad turbulence makes Chris nervous. There was one trip when the plane suddenly dropped, knocking a flight attendant unconscious after she hit the ceiling.

His sister, Carol, keeps flying, too. Based in New York City, she frequently travels internationally for business. With the jet-setting lifestyle, farewells aren’t said lightly.

“We never let anyone go away mad when we say goodbye,” Carol said. “We don’t take leaving each other for granted.”

Monday 9 December 2013

http://www.newarkpostonline.com/regional/article_c539e445-0cd1-5368-af70-f2bff93a1d93.html

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Identifying victims of Argentina's 'Dirty War'

The lab in Buenos Aires houses row after row of boxes, each containing the unidentified remains of a long-missing son, daughter, father or mother. The neatly-stacked boxes of skeletal fragments are held in a lab belonging to the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team.

For nearly 30 years, the group has examined the remains of countless dead from all over the world, including those of revolutionary icon "Che" Guevara, who was executed in Bolivia more than 40 years ago.

But its dozens of scientists are at work now on a task closer to home – identifying the remains of hundreds of victims from Argentina's "Dirty War" of the 1970s and 1980s.

The bones, retrieved from mass graves, are among the 30,000 Argentines who "disappeared" during the dictatorship, and presumably were murdered by the regime.

The work is a joint effort involving anthropologists, biologists, archaeologists and forensic specialists.

These scientists over the years have uncovered the identities of some 600 leftists who went missing during the military regime – work they said is at once painful and painstaking.

"One identification can take years," explained Luis Fondebrider, an anthropologist from the University of Buenos Aires.

This month marks 30 years since the end of the bloody dictatorship in this South American country, where military rulers reigned from 1976-1983.

Written on some of the boxes are the letters, "NN" for "no name." Each bone fragment is carefully numbered and labeled in red ink.

Identifying victims without a name

Two of the "no names," examined on a wooden table covered in black cloth have bullets in the skulls, and one of the skulls has multiple fractures, a sign of likely torture.

The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo – a rights group of family members whose loved ones disappeared during the dictatorship – praised the work of these scientific experts.

"It gives us great pain – first comes the disappearance," said Nora Cortinas, president of the group.

Then, she said, there is the second blow, when the scientist confirm the identity of a deceased loved one.

"That is the harsh reality we have to live with," Cortinas said.

The walls of the Argentine lab are covered with pictures of skeletons in various positions – graphic images showing the position of the bodies when they were found in a mass grave in northern Argentina.

Their work has led to hundreds of trials and helped lead to the convictions of more than 400 members of the regime.

The massive effort of identifying the remains has been under way for four years, and has involved collecting blood samples from relatives of the missing, and comparing it with genetic samples belonging to the victims.

"We need more relatives to come forward to donate blood," Fondebrider said, adding that an effort is under way to collect DNA samples in some 60 hospitals throughout the country, as well as at Argentina's overseas embassies.

"We have received many [samples] in Spain, France, Denmark and Norway," he said.

The office next door to the lab houses files pertaining to hundreds of places which functioned as clandestine prisons, and where additional genetic material from the victims might be found. Dental records, which commonly are used to identify missing people in other countries, are less useful here.

"Teeth give clues, but in Argentina there is no law requiring dentists to keep the records belonging to their patients," Fondebrider said.

The anthropologist added that one of the hardest parts of his job is returning the remains to the families, after the rigorous job of identifying the bones is completed.

"Some take a long time to pick up [the bones] – it's not easy. It's an emotional process," he said.

"It's as if the person died all over again. ... It is probably the worst part of our work."

Monday 9 December 2013

http://www.ticotimes.net/More-news/News-Briefs/Identifying-victims-of-Argentina-s-Dirty-War-_Sunday-December-08-2013

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Seven dead, nine missing in Brazilian landslide

At least seven people died and nine others are missing in a landslide caused by a heavy rainstorm that buried about 20 homes on the weekend in Lajedinho, a city in the interior of the Brazilian state of Bahia, firefighters reported Sunday.

An intense downpour lasting about two hours saturated the ground enough to cause landslides on Saturday night, destroying a number of homes and leaving about 100 people homeless, according to the Civil Defense authorities in Bahia, in the northeastern part of Brazil.

Firefighters confirmed recovering seven bodies in Lajedinho, a town located some 355 kilometers (220 miles) from Salvador, the regional capital, and they are continuing to search in the mud and among the ruins of pulverized homes for nine people who are still missing.

The seven known fatalities included six women and a 3-year-old boy.

The city authorities, who have not yet calculated the material losses, are housing the homeless temporarily in a local school.

“A deluge of water fell between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m.,” said Bahia Vice Gov. Otto Alencar.

According to local residents, Lajedinho experiences constant problems from rain because of its location in a depression at the bottom of a valley.

Monday 9 December 2013

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=1288163&CategoryId=14090

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Thirteen Army Personnel Missing as Boat Used in Training Exercise Sinks in Klebang Besar

Thirteen army personnel are missing after the boat they were travelling in sank near the waters of Klebang Besar.

Initial information from the state Fire and Rescue Department's operations action centre showed that several fire engines and all officers from its diver unit had been dispatched for a search and rescue operation from about 5pm on Sunday.

It was believed that the group were on a regular training exercise since 9pm Saturday.

An emergency response booth has been set up on a beach with an ambulance on standby.

Army personnel were seen securing the beach area and members of the media were asked to leave.

An unidentified uniformed personnel insisted that a reporter from a vernacular newspaper deleted a picture showing army personnel and their boat near the beach from her laptop.

No official information has been obtained from the army nor police so far.

The search and rescue operation is ongoing.

Sunday 8 December 2013

http://www.malaysiandigest.com/frontpage/282-main-tile/481038-thirteen-army-personnel-missing-after-boat-sinks-during-training-exercise.html

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Mozambique air crash: DNA collected to identify bodies

Work has begun on collecting DNA samples from relatives of those who died when the Mozambique Airlines (LAM) flight from Maputo to Luanda crashed on 29 November in northern Namibia, killing all 33 people on board.

According to a LAM press release, this work began on Friday, and is intended to assist in the identification of the bodies, which are currently in a morgue in the Namibian capital, Windhoek.

Reports from the crash site indicate that only one of the bodies was intact. The force of the impact dismembered the others, many of which were too severely burned for normal identification.

People directly related to the victims are being asked to come forward and provide samples. These, LAM says, will be examined “by a small group of well trained and experienced professionals, working on the basis of internationally recognised standards. They have been authorised by Mozambican forensic pathologists to undertake this important job”.

This work is being done in private, and LAM guarantees that “the data will remain confidential forever. Nothing will be revealed to anyone who is outside this work. The only people who will have knowledge of it are those collecting the data, the people supporting the families, the staff of the laboratories that will make the analyses, and the families themselves”.

The purpose of this exercise, the release says, is “to allow the delivery of the remains and possessions of all the people who were on board the flight so that the families can organise the funerals of their loved ones”.

Although the collection of DNA is not invasive, psychologists are on hand to assist any family members who find the process stressful and disturbing.

Meanwhile, a mural in memory of those who died has been unveiled in an area beside the LAM headquarters. At this ceremony family members laid wreaths of white roses and other flowers. “Ths mural is a temporary arrangement to provide an immediate opportunity to thepeople who wish to pay homage to their loved ones”, LAM explains. “In due time, a permanent and definitive memorial will be erected”.

Sunday 8 December 2013

http://allafrica.com/stories/201312080109.html

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Remains of 163 dead Guatemalans given to families

The remains of 163 people, who were massacred in Guatemala's civil war, have been delivered to their relatives, officials say.

On Saturday, the bodies of victims of the 1982 Dos Erres massacre were given to their families who shouldered wooden coffins and took them to a local cemetery.

The carnage took place in Dos Erres, a small village in northern Guatemala, during the decades-long civil war on December 6, 1982. It was under the military rule of former dictator Efrain Rios Montt who stands trial for genocide.

At the time of the killings, the army was searching for 40 guns stolen by a guerrilla unit the previous October.

Dos Erres was invaded since the villagers were thought to be supportive of the guerrillas.

After the exhumation of the bodies, five soldiers were found guilty for the incident and were put on trial. They were sentenced to 6,000 years in jail, although Guatemala's utmost prison term is 50 years.

A UN-backed fact-finding committee registered 669 massacres during the civil war, of which 626 were attributed to government forces.

The Guatemalan conflict began in 1960 and continued for 36 years. According to a 1999 UN-sponsored report, some 200,000 people lost their lives or went missing during the clashes.

Sunday 8 December 2013

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/12/08/338783/163-guatemalan-bodies-given-to-families/

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South Korea enshrines 666 sets of remains of Korean War dead

South Korea enshrined the remains of 666 soldiers on Friday, more than 60 years after they were killed in the three-year Korean War that ended in a truce in 1953.

Prime Minister Chung Hong-won, Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin and 400 other government and military officials attended an enshrinement ceremony at Seoul National Cemetery for the remains excavated this year.

A total of 731 sets of remains were recovered after searching 77 former battlefield sites from March to November, of which 666 have been confirmed to be those of South Korean soldiers, according to a government report.

The other remains have been determined to be those of enemy forces, meaning North Korean and Chinese troops.

Following the ceremony, the Defense Ministry's Agency for Killed in Action Recovery and Identification (MAKRI) will begin analyzing the remains to identify them, the report said.

The agency, which has collected 26,490 DNA samples of bereaved families, will use the data to verify the identity of the fallen soldiers so that their bodies can be returned to their loved ones, the ministry said.

Meanwhile, the remains of North Korean and Chinese soldiers will be temporarily buried at the so-called "enemy cemetery" in Paju, just south of the demilitarized zone that separates the two Koreas, it said.

In 2000, the South Korean army launched a three-year mission to search for the remains of its soldiers killed in the Korean War. With widespread public support, the government established MAKRI in 2007 with troops with expertise in history, forensic science and archeology.

MAKRI has been conducting operations nationwide to find the remains of the 130,000 soldiers still unaccounted for out of the 160,000 who are classified as missing or killed during the Korean War.

A total of 7,658 bodies have been recovered since 2000, but it has only been possible to return 83 of them to their families. The rest of the remains are awaiting DNA and other forensic tests.

Friday 6 December 2013

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=bodies+missing&safe=strict&rlz=1C1SVED_enGB390GB390&espv=210&es_sm=122&source=lnms&tbm=nws&sa=X&ei=RaOhUuiyCYuBhQfsqoDoAw&ved=0CAwQ_AUoBA&safe=strict

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Waiting for the dead of Lampedusa

Relatives of those who died in one of the worst boat disasters off the shores of Europe in living memory are still waiting to be allowed to take their family members for a proper burial. A total of 366 people - mostly from Eritrea - died when the boat carrying them sank close to the Italian island of Lampedusa.

Church bells sound on the late afternoon breeze as Alem Araya walks through the cemetery in the little Sicilian village of San Biagio Platani.

"Emotional, yes," he says quietly. "It's not easy."

Mr Araya, 49, an Eritrean who has lived in Germany for much of his life, passes row upon row of ornate tombs, pictures of the Virgin Mary and Jesus looking down on him as he heads for the open ground at the bottom of the hill.

There, against a wall, are five basic graves, each with a headstone.

He stops in front of them, crosses himself, bows his head slightly and then, after a moment, breaks down in tears. His sobs echo across the grave of his brother, and the four others lying now at his feet.

"They were all together in the boat from Libya to Lampedusa," he says quietly. "Four persons from Eritrea and one person from Ethiopia. All of them just young people."

His brother Bimnet was 36 years old. A former basketball player for the Eritrean national team. He had studied at university in London.

"He needed peace," Mr Araya says, wiping away a tear. "He's not alone. All of the generation of my brother have no future in Eritrea. That's why they left. To make another life in Europe. But their life ended in Lampedusa."

Bimnet could no longer stand the political situation in Eritrea, so like many others he crossed the border into neighbouring Sudan. From there he travelled to Libya to take a boat to Europe.

"I was against this travel to Libya," his brother says.

"I tried to bring him legally from Sudan to Germany. But he has many friends, and they were ready to go to Libya. He decided in a short time: 'No I cannot stay here - I will also take my chance with them.'"

There was no morgue big enough to store the bodies from the shipwreck, so for days they decayed in the heat of a hanger at Lampedusa's airport.

Then they were shipped off to Sicily and buried - stored essentially - at cemeteries across the island.

Most of the dead are identified only by a number - either placed next to their grave or etched into the concrete behind which they are entombed.

Some graves have been decorated with pictures of those buried inside. Next to one is a picture of a young couple and their baby girl. Number 93. Her name is Fthi.

Most likely the pictures were placed there by relatives who live in Europe who can visit, and who have been able to find their family members.

So far though - because there has been no proper identification process - they have not been able to take the bodies home for a proper burial. And most relatives cannot come - they cannot get the visa to leave Eritrea.

A massive DNA-testing programme is needed. In a clinic in the southern Sicilian town of Agrigento, Alem Araya is one of the first to have blood and a saliva swab taken.

He hands over 150 euros (£124; $203) to pay for the test, after struggling to make himself understood by the assistant who does not speak much English.

He has the money and resources to do this, and because he is a European resident he can come to Sicily. Most relatives of those who died cannot.

But even for him it has been very difficult to get this far.

"The problem is the Italian government is not ready to help us," he says. "The situation is very, very difficult and they know that. But I don't think they are ready to help me quickly."

When the boat sank, Italy's prime minister promised to do all he could to help the relatives.

Yet two months later, at the anonymous graves with their scratched in numbers, it is as if they have been forgotten, the evidence of Europe's worst maritime tragedy in years literally buried away.

The Italian government would not comment on Alem Araya's allegations.

He believes local officials are doing all they can, and yet for him and for his elderly mother, who is waiting back home in Eritrea for her son's body to be returned, it is all too painfully slow.

"For my mother when I say one more day, it's for her one year of pain," he says.

"It's too long. And not only for my mother, for all of the victims who have family in Eritrea and elsewhere. They are waiting for all the bodies to go back to Eritrea."

Up on a promenade close to the centre of Agrigento, he leans on a railing, the sun's light bouncing up off the Mediterranean Sea far below him.

"It's hard," he says. "Very, very hard to think about the situation in Lampedusa. I can't forget it."

His voice trails off, as he looks out at the sea. The sea in which his brother died.

Thursday 5 December 2013

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25220047

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‘Yolanda’ death toll reaches 5,818

The death toll in the wake of Supertyphoon “Yolanda” (international name: “Haiyan”) on Wednesday neared the 6,000 mark, nearly three times the initial estimate made by President Aquino days after the strongest typhoon to hit land battered Eastern Visayas.

There were still discrepancies in the numbers, however, highlighting the government’s inadequate system of assessing the physical damage from natural disasters.

Latest reports from the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) and field reports showed there were 5,818 fatalities from Yolanda, nearly the majority of whom drowned in the storm surge that caught many residents by surprise.

Of the figure, the NDRRMC said that 2,116 were from Tacloban City.

On Wednesday, field reports from Tacloban City showed that authorities had already recovered 2,215 bodies.

It was not even clear whether there were really a hundred bodies found floating in mangroves in San Juanico Bridge on Tuesday.

Senior Supt. Pablito Cordeta, an official of the Bureau of Fire Protection office here and the commander of the Task Force Cadaver in Tacloban City, said that his group recovered 25 bodies on Tuesday, bringing the total to 2,215.

He said another seven bodies were retrieved from the San Juanico Bridge on Dec. 2.

Cordeta debunked reports that more than 100 bodies were discovered by a Chinese humanitarian team floating at the famed bridge connecting Samar and Leyte across the San Juanico strait.

“That’s not true. We are belying that. There was no coordination with the task force. I am the task force commander and we do not know those foreigners and what they were claiming,” Cordeta said in Filipino.

Earlier estimates of fatalities from the supertyphoon were pegged at 10,000, which President Aquino lowered to between 2,000 and 2,500.

As the number of fatalities breached the 5,000 mark last week, Aquino conceded that the death toll could actually be higher. He said the low estimate he gave was based on the initial confirmed dead reported to him.

Government also criticized the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs for giving an initial estimate that was double than what President Aquino had earlier announced.

Establishing the death toll from a calamity is an important measure in assessing the impact of a natural disaster, enabling governments to establish their disaster risk reduction policies and measures.

Thursday 5 December 2013

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/540749/yolanda-death-toll-reaches-5818

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14 killed, 10 injured in Burkina Faso mine accident

At least 14 workers have been killed and 10 others injured when an illegal gold mine collapsed in western Burkina Faso, an official says.

The cave-in happened at around 1 a.m. local time (0100 GMT) on Sunday as miners were using dynamite inside an 80-meter (260-foot) deep mineshaft located in the town of Bagassi, just southwest of the capital Ouagadougou, said district administrator Tingande Nehemi Zoundi on Wednesday.

“Just after that dynamiting, a rock situated two meters below ground level became detached. All the people situated at the level below were struck,” the administrator said.

It took 17 hours for Emergency personnel to recover the bodies, all of whom are buried now, Zoundi added.

Interior Ministry official Sadou Sidibe blamed the accident on “anarchic” mining practices -- usually carried out by miners who work at unregulated mines and often with no protection.

The Burkina Faso government has prohibited artisanal mining during June to September -- the wet months -- but experts say officials do not have the means to enforce the ban.

The Bagassi site has been illegally mined for 17 years, with Canada-based miner Roxgold tasked with chasing out illegal miners while awaiting a mining permit.

Illegal and informal mining accidents are widespread during the rainy season throughout West Africa, where gold deposits can be found.

Thursday 5 December 2013

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/12/04/338268/14-killed-in-burkina-faso-mine-accident/

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Maharashtra staff Uttarakhand-bound to certify missing persons

The state will soon send officials from the Disaster Management Unit to Uttarakhand to clear confusion, coordinate and ensure that the death certificates are issued to all the 166 missing from the state.

There has been uncertainty over the number of people missing in the Uttarakhand floods.

However, the Uttarakhand government about two months ago released a list of 4,120 persons missing, of which 165 have been from state.

According to the state disaster management department, the number of people missing from Maharashtra totals to 165 besides one more person from Mumbai has been added to the list.

“There was some confusion about the 166th person missing as the family members had approached the Uttarakhand government directly. Therefore, we had no idea about this person,” said the official.

“As a matter of procedure, no death certificate is issued until the passage of seven years in case of missing persons. In this case, the central government has made an exception considering the circumstances of the disaster and the practical difficulties of finding their bodies or identifying them with tools such as DNA matching etc,” the official added.

Until the certificate is issued by the Uttarakhand government, compensation will not be granted to the family by the Uttarakhand government. “We are sending officials from to Uttarakhand.

Following which, the District Magistrate of the home district of the missing person will co-ordinate with the District Magistrate where the person may have gone missing in Uttarakhand. Once the co-ordination and procedures are followed, then a certificate will be issued by their state government for the victim. Once the death certificate is issued, then the compensation too would be given,” said the official.

Thursday 5 December 2013

http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report-maharashtra-staff-uttarakhand-bound-to-certify-missing-persons-1929919

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GenSan's missing fishermen, a year after typhoon Pablo

Exactly a year ago on Wednesday, December 4, some 377 fishermen from General Santos City were caught in the middle of a perfect storm.

Nobody knew what their fate were until well into the late afternoon of the following day, 5 Dec 2012, when a worried Dominic Salazar said only 3 crew members of a light boat owned by their company, Thidcor Fishing, have been found alive from a fishing fleet that consisted of one catcher vessel, a light boat and a ranger boat.

They were the fortunate to have survived the 30-feet waves that battered their boats for more than 12 hours. Their 24 other companions did not. They were never found.

So were the remains of 328 others.

Of the 377 fishermen who were officially accounted for, only 17 survived and only 8 of the missing were found. The rest were long ago presumed already dead, when the government rescuers gave up the vain search for their bodies two weeks after Super Typhoon Pablo (Bopha) hit Mindanao.

Such was the wrath of Pablo that it brought death and devastation both inland and in the high seas.

On 3 Dec 2012, Pablo approached and battered eastern Mindanao like no other typhoon in its recorded history. It hit landfall just after midnight.

Pablo left on its wake more than 1,043 dead, most of them in the provinces of Compostela Valley and Davao Province. The figure includes the fishermen for General Santos City and Sarangani.

General Santos City Mayor Ronnel Rivera said the story of the brave fishermen who lost their lives in the storm is not lost in memory. Without them and the more than 25,000 directly employed in the fishing industry, this city would not have earned its moniker as the Tuna Capital of the Philippines.

But a year into their tragic agony and death, no one seems to remember them anymore.

Even the promised marker to honor their memory has been lost in the conversation among city officials.

The city council, many of members not yet elected when the tragedy happened, does not seem to care despite expressing interests in honoring the dead and missing fishermen as soon as they were elected into office in May.

The previous city council was even worse. When then city councilor Rivera introduced a resolution to erect a monument in honor of the dead, he was immediately met with skepticism from the then majority block identified with former city mayor Darlene Antonino Custodio.

Custodio herself promised to seriously consider the proposal. It apparently got lost along the way as nothing ever came out from city hall.

Neither has the Socsksargen Association of Fishing and Allied Industry seriously pursued its commitment to set aside funds for the construction of such memorial.

Fishing boat owners have seemed to move on, having settled most of their promised obligations to the families of the victims of Pablo – some for a mere P50,000 cash assistance.

Maybe the more devastating Super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) already buried the memory of Pablo.

But for the wives and children, mothers and fathers who were left behind, the memory and the wounds are as fresh as they were a year ago.

Angelina Nemeño, whose husband Cornelio as among those whose body was never found, said coming to terms for her and children’s loss is a reality they have already embraced. But the pitiful assistance they got from the owner of the fishing boat is still too painful to ignore.

Cornelio, then 51, was the piyado – boat skipper – of F/B Queen Mary owned by Thidcor Fishing.

All she got from the company was P70,000 despite the 26 years of service her husband had rendered for the company. She also received P20,000 burial assistance and another P14,000 as death benefits from the Social Security System (SSS). Angelina says she will begin receiving pension from the SSS in January 2014 – for P1,000 a month.

Like Angelina, Alma Andaya also received P50,000 in cash assistance from RA Fishing Industry for her husband Rolan Dampog who likewise was declared missing.

All families of the victims – dead and the few who survived – also got P10,000 each from the local government and grocery items.

But after that, they were left to fend for their own as the fishing companies were insistent that sans the employer-employee relationship, they are not required to give beyond that assistance they have agreed to offer – P50,000.

Sadly, not one of those interviewed said their husbands and sons left some insurance policies for such eventuality.

Sr. Susan Bolaño who is helping organize the families of the victims to secure justice said they have been preparing legal actions against the fishing companies where the missing fishermen worked prior their presumed deaths. But for some, they have given up hope and chose to suffer in silence.

They chose December 4 as the day to remember their departed – the tomb markers and epitaphs etched in the blue waters.

In a heart-rending commemoration of the tragic fate of their loved ones, they offered flowers to the sea – hoping the memory of their dead will not be lost in the city made famous by its brave fishermen.

Thursday 5 December 2013

http://www.rappler.com/nation/45306-general-santos-missing-fishermen-a-year-after-pablo

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INS Sindhurakshak: Navy divers still looking for bodies of missing sailors

Even after submarine INS Sindhurakshak sank following a huge explosion and fire here on Aug 14, Navy divers are still looking for bodies of missing sailors in the wreckage of the warship, said sources.

According to a statement made by Vice-Admiral Shekhar Sinha, chief of Western Naval Command the navy divers had not stopped the search operation. "Our divers are still at the job. We are trying to find out if human remains can be found."

Till now only 11 bodies have been recovered while 18 Navy personnel, including three officers, were on board at the time of the mishap.

A huge explosion rocked the submarine, commissioned in 1997, leading to the frontline warship's sinking in what was seen as a major dent in the Indian Navy's firepower capability.

"A team of divers, who had rehearsed with a similar type of submarine, were made to operate in zero visibility and then sent for rescue operation," he said.

Immediately after the Sindhurakshak disaster, Navy did an audit of all other submarines, their loaded weapons and the crew manning them, said the Western naval command chief.

Wednesday 4 December 2013

http://daily.bhaskar.com/article/MAH-MUM-ins-sindhurakshak-navy-divers-still-look-for-bodies-of-missing-sailors-4453323-NOR.html

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Biggest exhumation underway from Peru conflict

Valentin Casa can't shake the recurring nightmares. And this day certainly isn't helping.

The 36-year-old farmer looks on as forensic investigators unearth a pair of finger bones and two copper rings from a mass grave in the village of Huallhua on the eastern steppes of Peru's Andes. The grave contains the long-buried remains of two women and 13 children, and Casa believes the bones and rings belonged to his mother.

As a boy 27 years ago, Casa watched from behind trees as soldiers and their paramilitary allies dismembered and killed his mother and other women and children left behind by fleeing Shining Path rebels. Civilians suspected of backing the rebels were hunted down and killed. Two weeks later, troops and their civilian confederates caught and killed men from Casa's village, including his father, whose throat they slit.

Three decades later, this isolated corner of Peru is witnessing the biggest exhumation to date of victims of the nation's 1980-2000 internal conflict. The worst of its carnage occurred on these hills between the Andes ridge and Amazon jungle.

"Everybody here is traumatized," Casa says as he watches the work underway. "Whoever says he isn't is lying."

Authorities in distant Lima have been painfully slow to dispatch teams to dig up the dead from a brutal conflict that, according to a 2003 truth commission report, claimed an estimated 70,000 lives. Just over half were slain by Maoist-inspired rebels, over a third by security forces, the commission found. Human rights activists blame politics, including resistance from the military, for the delay in exhuming the bodies. Fifty criminal investigations were only launched into the killings in 2011, said the prosecutor in charge, Gloria Pareja.

In November, forensic anthropologists began their work in the Chungui district and expect to remove 202 bodies in all — mostly women and children. At least 1,384 people were killed in Chungui, which is slightly larger than Hong Kong geographically but has only 6,000 inhabitants.

People there are constantly uncovering bones but very few graves have been exhumed by professionals.

The killing fields are an 18-hour walk from the nearest road in a region known as "Oreja de Perro," or Dog's Ear. It is a place where health care, schools, police and other state institutions barely exist. There are no roads, electricity or phones. The hills are still patrolled by Shining Path rebels, and drug traffickers flaunt the state's absence.

At the edge of a shallow pit, Casa provides security for the forensic team while armed with a worn Mossberg 500 shotgun. He watches the technicians uncover a skull here, a swath of clothing there and finds himself overwhelmed by memories.

"I drank my own urine to survive," Casa remembers after his mother was killed and he fled into the forest.

The exhumers gather the diminutive bones of children, 26 found so far in the district, in boxes made to hold sweet bread.

Tuesday 3 December 2013

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/dec/02/biggest-exhumation-underway-from-peru-conflict/

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Clutha pub disaster bodies recovered after helicopter wreckage is winched clear

The remaining two bodies from the Glasgow helicopter tragedy were ­recovered yesterday after the mangled wreckage was winched from the roof of the Clutha Vaults pub.

Rescuers used a crane to remove the shattered aircraft, whose crew – two police officers and a civilian pilot – were killed along with six people inside the building in Friday night’s disaster.

The rotor blades and part of the tail had been taken away on Sunday but yesterday the fuselage was secured and winched slowly off the roof.

The wreckage was taken by lorry to the Air Accidents Investigation Branch base in Farnborough, Hampshire.

Removing the Eurocopter EC135 T2 allowed the rest of the devastated building to be searched. Last night police announced that the search and ­recovery operation had concluded, with no further victims inside.

Police Scotland Deputy Chief ­Constable Rose Fitzpatrick said: “I can confirm that the search and recovery operation has now concluded and we are satisfied there are no further ­fatalities at the scene.”

The pub had been packed with revellers enjoying a local ska band. Only five of the nine dead have been formally identified.

Some relatives told yesterday of their anger at the length of time it has taken to recover and identify the bodies.

John McGarrigle, 38, whose father, John senior, 59, is thought to be among the dead, said: “What about the dignity for the human beings underneath that police helicopter? I want my dad out of there. I know he was in there. It’s like a piece of machinery is more important than the people underneath there.”

Mark O’Prey, 44, is also among the missing. His father Ian and sister ­Louise criticised the delay.

Ian said: “If they had made a better attempt on the Saturday, they could have got them out a lot earlier.”

Louise added: “We just need to know. We feel as a family that the ­priority is given to keeping that helicopter intact, which is no use to us.”

Louise said she continues to call Mark’s phone in the hope he will pick up. Police boss Ms Fitzpatrick said: “We are working hard to formally identify the remaining victims as soon as ­possible in order to bring some ­certainty to the families who have been waiting for news since the tragic incident on Friday. As many have acknowledged, it has been a difficult and complex recovery operation.”

Captain Dave Traill and officers Kirsty Nelis, 36, and Tony Collins, 43, died on board when the aircraft hit the pub as it returned from a police operation. Gary Arthur, 48, from ­Paisley, and Samuel McGhee, 56, from Glasgow, were among those killed in the pub. Eleven people remain in ­hospital, three in intensive care.

Tuesday 3 December 2013

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/446453/Clutha-pub-disaster-bodies-recovered-after-helicopter-wreckage-is-winched-clear

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Namibia: Investigating team sent to Bwabwata plane crash site, DNA tests conducted

Prime Minister Hage Geingob has officially dispatched the team of investigators to dig deep into the Mozambican flight disaster, which killed 33 people in Kavango East on Friday.

Geingob briefly told the media that he had been assigned by President Hifikepunye Pohamba to ensure that the team is sent off. The team consists of experts from Botswana, Angola, Mozambique, Brazil, China, the USA and Namibia, who is leading the probe.

The Namibian understands that the premier was briefed by the investigators on their preliminary findings. It is believed the plane crashed a few minutes after 13h00 in Bwabwata National Park, while en route to Angola from Mozambique. Among those on board were six crew members and 27 passengers, of whom 10 were Mozambicans, nine Angolans, five Portuguese, one Portuguese-Brazilian, one French and one Chinese. By yesterday afternoon, only 31 bodies had been found and airlifted to Windhoek. Paul Ludik, the Director of the National Forensic Science Institute in Namibia, who is part of the DNA testing team said they were busy at work but declined to give more details.

"The media will be informed later. We are are still busy and it will be difficult to say what time we will finish, considering the bodies and processes involved," he said.

Officials in the ministry of works also said they are going to comply with the International Civil Aviation Organisation rules, which state that a preliminary report should be compiled within 30 days after the accident. It is not yet clear what caused the accident but officials said the plane, an Embraer SA 190, went missing on Friday in bad weather, which caused poor visibility.

DNA tests

Experts carried out DNA tests Monday to identify the 33 people who were on a Mozambique Airlines plane that crashed in Namibia killing all on board, an official said.

Thirty one bodies had by late Sunday been pulled from the charred wreckage of the plane in the swamps of northern Namibia's Bwabwata National Park.

“We are still busy,” Paul Ludik, director of the Namibia's national forensic science institute, told AFP, adding “it will be difficult to say what time we are going to finish, considering the processes involved.”

The institute is leading the probe into the crash and the processes to identify the victims.

“Namibia, as the country where the accident occurred, will lead the investigation,” the airline said in a statement.

Other investigators will be drawn from Angola, Brazil Mozambique and the US National Transport Safety Board.

The plane's black boxes have also been recovered along with two voice recorders, Captain Ericksson Nengola, director of aircraft accident investigations at the Namibian transport ministry, told AFP on Sunday.

Mozambique was to declare a national period of mourning for the victims, who came from Mozambique, Angola, Brazil, China, France and Portugal.

The crash was one of the worst incidents in Mozambique's civil aviation history.

The passenger craft came down in torrential rains on Friday in the remote Namibian region killing its six crew and 27 passengers.

The victims' bodies were transferred by helicopter to the Namibian capital Windhoek from the crash site some 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) to the northeast.

The plane, which went down en route from Mozambique to Angola, was a Brazil-manufactured Embraer 190 aircraft and the newest plane in the airline's fleet.

“We have also begun making arrangements for a memorial service for the families, loved ones, friends and colleagues of everyone who was on board,” the airline said

Tuesday 3 December 2013

http://allafrica.com/stories/201312030357.html

http://dawn.com/news/1060014/tests-begin-to-identify-mozambican-plane-crash-victims

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‘Yolanda’ death toll at 5,680; 1,779 still missing

Almost a month after Supertyphoon “Yolanda” (Haiyan) ravaged Eastern Visayas and nearby provinces, the death toll continues to rise, with 5,680 bodies recovered as of Tuesday morning.

The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) in its latest report said 1,779 people remained missing, especially in Leyte and other areas hit by the deadly storm surge.

Most of the fatalities were from Eastern Visayas, with 2,077 coming from Tacloban City in Leyte alone. This was followed by the municipalities of Tanauan and Palo which recorded death tolls of at least 1,000 each.

Retrieval and clean-up operations in the last few weeks have contributed to the death toll increase as bodies were continuously recovered underneath debris left by the typhoon.

The NDRRMC has also been able to issue a detailed list of fatalities on their website with the names of the victims and their cause of death. Many drowned or died from injuries after being hit by debris at the height of the typhoon last November 8.

With 587,035 houses totally destroyed and another 593,802 houses damaged, the government is shifting its focus to the rehabilitation and reconstruction of typhoon-hit areas.

On Monday, former senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson spoke with media on his plans as the “rehabilitation czar” for areas affected by the super typhoon.

The total cost of damages to infrastructure and agriculture has been pegged at P34 billion, with roads, bridges and other structures sustaining P14 billion worth of damages.

Also pressing is the lack of electricity in many provinces under Regions IV-B, V, VI, VII and VIII.

Tuesday 3 December 2013

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/539469/yolanda-death-toll-at-5680-1779-still-missing

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Forensic doc feels 'burned' after helping gov't

Dr. Raquel Fortun, a well-known forensic expert, will have to think twice next time the government seeks her help in identifying cadavers.

Fortun, who has been instrumental in identifying bodies in past tragedies, said she and her colleagues have been “burned” after being set aside five days after putting in place a system by which to identify the victims of super typhoon Yolanda.

“If the government asks for help? I don’t know. When I got in, I thought that was it. We had authorization from no less than the Office of the President to do something. If I had known on the fifth day they would just drop us, I would not have said yes. For future requests, I think I’ll have second thoughts, napaso na ako e,” she told ANC.

The forensic expert said a system is very important in identifying the thousands of bodies in areas affected by super typhoon Yolanda.

Fortun and her group started on November 18 but had to pack their bags after five days. This was after the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) questioned their mode of identification.

NBI officer-in-charge Medardo de Lemos already apologized, noting it was only a misunderstanding between the two camps. Fortun was with experts from the Department of Health and World Health Organization, while the NBI sought the help of the Interpol.

Fortun said she does not know if there is a system in place right now after they left.

How hard is the task now? “Is it impossible? The answer should be no. You have to try and you have to be fast. With decomposition, you lose information. I don’t know what’s happening now. Have we not been stopped…we were already averaging 100 bodies a day," Fortun said.

Earlier, Fortun twitted the slow reporting of the casualties of Yolanda. President Benigno Aquino III was reported as saying, “It’s because you have to make sure that there is the certification or a coroner’s report before it is made official.”

In her Twitter account, she answered back: “Certification of a coroner’s report is needed before a body is counted? Do you know Mr. President that we don’t have coroners in the Philippines?”

She also said the system was better during President Gloria Arroyo’s time.

“Arroyo’s term may not have been spanking clean. But at least there was a sense that we were governed,” she noted.

“With former President GMA, you throw all the problems at her and she will deal with them. But the one who is sitting now is allergic to bad news,” she said.

Differences in system

Fortun said NBI already questioned their mode of identifying the bodies since they first met for a meeting on the deployment to Tacloban.

“The NBI was pushing for an Interpol kind. [That of] WHO is more practical…there was no systematic taking of DNA samples, [we] had no dental charting because we don’t even have dentists,” she said.

NBI wanted to do the routine process of gathering DNA, such as swabbing the insides of the mouth of the bodies, she explained.

“Why take routine DNA samples from each body. You can’t just do swabbing because the bodies are already decomposing and may have been contaminated.”

She said the best way to take the DNA is from the bones, but this is out of the question because of the thousands of bodies that they had to work on.

“Imagine the thousands of samples you have to deal with. These are forensic cases so you have to be careful in packaging and labeling. Where will you get your storage facility? How do you manage thousands upon thousands of bodies,” she asked.

She said their system was more basic and simpler.

“We get the basics. We [determine] the sex. Is it an adult or infant? We describe the clothes. For the dental records, it was just photography.”

The bodies are then buried temporarily in trenches, where there will be a numbering system.

A deduction method will then be in place. She said a group will be in charge of antemortem information, where relatives can describe the missing.

“Then maybe we’ll have a database. For example, we look at all male adults for recognition, personal effects. We determine where the bodies are buried. After that, the process becomes more definitive,” she explained.

She said the NBI system was “just not possible.”

She surmised: “I don’t even know if [they] have identified the agency that will do antemortem.”

Monday 2 December 2013

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/focus/12/02/13/forensic-doc-feels-burned-after-helping-govt

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More than 2,000 ‘Yolanda’ victims unidentified

More than 2,000 fatalities remain unidentified in Tacloban City, over three weeks after Supertyphoon “Yolanda” ripped through Eastern Visayas.

Last week, retrieval teams from government agencies and volunteer organizations recovered more bodies under the rubble, raising the possibility the number of dead could reach 10,000 as earlier estimated by a police official.

The official tally of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) remained at 5,632 dead, with 1,759 persons still missing. The 2,000 unidentified victims were among the 5,632.

In its latest advisory, the NDRRMC on Sunday said only 108 fatalities from Guiuan, Eastern Samar, and Matag-ob, Leyte, had been identified by their relatives.

Monday 2 December 2013

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/538641/more-than-2000-yolanda-victims-unidentified-ndrrmc

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The Clutha Tragedy: Identification of helicopter crash victims will take time

Their thirst for knowledge about every detail is completely understandable.

At the Clutha Vaults it can appear there is an inordinate delay in answering that most basic question for some of the families, 'Is my loved one, one of the dead?'.

I have no doubt the authorities want to confirm those facts and break the news, but great care has to be taken to get this right.

The law demands it, and a mistake in such a sensitive area is unforgiveable.

It's like a doctor giving a patient a wrong diagnosis, or a miscarriage of justice.

It is clear that the Clutha incident scene remains a very challenging site.

It looks like the remains of the helicopter are holding up the building and vice versa.

Body recovery has to be done safely and professionally and this is going to be a slower process than anyone would want.

I've also no doubt the emergency services will have full regard to the dignity of the deceased of the sort that was apparent in incidents including Piper Alpha, Lockerbie and Stockline.

Meantime, I've no doubt that the list of potential victims held by the police is a larger number than the real number.

Despite appeals, some people won't have checked in with their families to say they are safe and will currently be listed as missing.

I have also heard no confirmation that the final number is eight.

That number won't be confirmed until all the rubble is painstakingly searched.

It is not a clear cut situation.

The police will have appointed a Senior Identification Manager (SIM) with a very distinct role from the well known Senior Investigating Officer (SIO) who investigates the incident.

The job of the SIM is to co-ordinate body recovery, mortuary arrangements, and identification procedure.

An Identification Commission will have been set up which will include the SIM, the procurator fiscal, a pathologist, odontologist, and forensic support.

They look at all the identification evidence available to determine if identification has been established.

I have no doubt that, regrettably, because of problems in accessing and recovering the bodies they will not have all the evidence they really need, which would include visual identification, fingerprints, dental records, DNA, supplemented by things such as personal effects, clothing, scars, tattoos and the like.

It's easy to ask for patience, but also easy to understand the distress the time it is taking is causing. I know the authorities will be working as quickly as humanly possible.

I am also sure the families of potential victims will be having the challenges and procedures explained to them, notably by Family Liaison Officers who will be attached to every family will provide as much information and support as they can.

Finally, my own commiserations to all the families involved in this tragedy.

Monday 2 December 2013

http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/the-clutha-tragedy-identification-will-take-time-144126n.22846505

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Mozambique airline crashes in Zambezi killing all 33 on board

Investigations are underway to determine what precisely caused the horrific plane crash that killed all 33 people aboard the Mozambican national airline plane that went down in the Bwabwata National Park in the Zambezi Region on Friday afternoon.

The plane went missing on Friday mid-day, but the Namibian police only managed to locate the wreckage late on Friday afternoon a few kilometres from the border between Namibia and Botswana, in the Bwabwata National Park, and had to guard the scene from lions and other predators until the arrival of inspectors of the Directorate of Civil Aviation the next day.

“We could not really tell how many people were on board [at the time], because it was just bodies and plane parts scattered all over the place. All the bodies were shredded to pieces, it was an ugly scene because none of the bodies were [intact],” said Regional Crime Investigations Coordinator, Deputy Commissioner Willie Bampton, who was one of the emergency and security personnel first to arrive at the scene.

Namibia’s aircraft accident investigation unit is leading the investigation, which comprises of seasoned investigators from civil aviation authorities from Mozambique, Angola, Brazil and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), an independent United States federal agency.

Mozambique’s national airline, Linhas Aereas de Mozambique (LAM), has also sent its own response team yesterday to assist and provide support to Namibian authorities with the investigation.

“We have mobilised Kenyon International, a global specialist disaster and emergency management organisation to assist in the search and recovery of the victims remains and also their personal possessions. For the families, this is important, as it will enable the positive identification of each person who was on the aircraft. The Kenyon team is en-route from the UK to the accident site and by tomorrow we hope to have a clear assessment of the situation there,” said LAM Chief Executive Officer Marlene Manave yesterday morning.

According to senior investigators on the ground, information available so far indicate that the Embraer 190 aircraft started descending uncontrollably from 38 000 feet at about 13h09 on Friday, while still within Botswana airspace until it hit the ground.

Flight TM 470 was a scheduled service from Maputo to Luanda, carrying 27 passengers and six crew members. The 93-seater plane was still under the control of the civil aviation authorities in Botswana when it started its fatal descend.

The 33 people on the plane included 10 Mozambicans, nine Angolans, five Portuguese, one French, one Brazilian and one Chinese national. The remains of the deceased were transported to the Rundu State Hospital mortuary on Saturday evening and flown to Windhoek yesterday morning aboard a Namibian Air Force aircraft.

The accident took place at a time that African countries are working hard to shed off the negative reputation of accident-prone African airlines, the majority of which are still banned from flying over European Union airspace due to stringent EU safety standards. Currently there are only five African countries and their airlines, which are permitted to fly over European airspace, of which Namibia is one.

Linhas Aereas de Mozambique (LAM) said the plane was purchased brand new in late 2012 and had completed 2 905 flight-hours when it crashed. Bampton said the aircraft skidded over 500 metres on the ground before coming to a standstill.

“If it was not for the trees and bushes in the area the plane might have skidded further over the ground,” said the deputy commissioner.

The Mozambican government said it would declare a period of national mourning for the victims.

Yesterday the Namibian government also extended its condolences to the government of Mozambique and the bereaved families. The Minister of Works and Transport, Erkki Nghimtina, said there were no casualties on the ground and indicated that the names of the deceased cannot be released until their next of kin have been informed.

The Minister of Safety and Security, Immanuel Ngatjizeko, who was at the site on Saturday afternoon, described the accident as horrendous.

“What more can one say with destruction such as this, it is a loss for the people of Mozambique and the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC). I understand there were minors on the plane,” said Ngatjizeko.

He also explained that he had to visit the accident scene in order that he could brief President Hifikepunye Pohamba as to what transpired. “Investigations must be done as soon as possible, but of course we want it to be done properly,” Ngatjizeko said.

LAM has also expressed its condolences to the bereaved families. “At this time, our thoughts and prayers are with the families and loved ones of the passengers and crew who were on board the aircraft and it is their well-being and taking care of their immediate needs that is and must take priority,” Manave said in a statement yesterday morning.

As an initial form of assistance, LAM has established family liaison centres in the Maputo and Luanda airports. At the same time, the airline is also providing advice to the families about the international legal processes that have to be followed following a fatal air accident.

LAM further says the aircraft was manufactured in Brazil and was powered by two General Electric CF34-10 turbofan engines. It was delivered brand new from the factory and entered service with LAM on November 17, 2012, said the airline. “Until yesterday [Friday accident], the aircraft had logged 2 905 flight-hours in 1 877 flights,” Manave said.

Sunday 2 December 2013

http://allafrica.com/stories/201312020287.html?viewall=1

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Relatives mark 50th anniversary of Trans-Canada Air Lines crash that killed 118

It took Robert Page nearly 50 years to come to grips with the death of his father in one of Canada's worst air disasters. On Friday, he wasn't alone. He and about 350 relatives of the 118 people who died in the Nov. 29, 1963, crash of a Trans-Canada Air Lines flight came together in the community where it happened to mark the tragedy's half-century anniversary. People who had never met but were connected through sorrow listened as the names of the victims were read aloud in a private service. "They're spending time talking and getting to know each other and remembering their loved ones," Page said in an interview Friday. "I hope it's a time of healing." The world was still reeling from the assassination of then-U.S. president John F. Kennedy when witnesses reported seeing Flight 831 catch fire and then explode shortly after takeoff from Montreal's Dorval airport. A federal Transport Canada investigation reported in 1965 it couldn't determine an exact cause because the DC-8 jet, the biggest in the airline's fleet, had disintegrated. Page was 16 when his father John, a vice-president with H.J. Heinz of Canada, boarded the flight. John Page, 48, grew up in Toronto and was an accountant by training. After service as an air force navigator in the Second World War, he joined Heinz and worked his way up the ranks, being named vice-president of sales and marketing in 1963. "He was on his first trip to the Maritimes," Robert Page recalled. "Coming back was when he was killed." The aircraft crashed around 6:30 p.m. in a muddy field near Ste-Therese-de-Blainville. It created a crater about 45 metres long by 22.5 metres wide. Debris was spread across an area 800 metres long and 75 metres wide. The impact of the crash was reported to have shattered windows in the area and knocked over household items. "It fell into a field that was quite marshy," said Martin Rodgers, a local historian. "It was cold, it was raining." Hunks of metal littered the ground and what appeared to be clothing hung from tree branches. A cacaphony of sirens wailed along the Laurentian highway adjacent to the crash site as rescuers rushed to the scene. Fires crackled in the wreckage. Areas turned into a swamp by the heavy rains of the previous days complicated the work of rescue workers, who had to wait for heavy machinery to open a path from the main road to the crash site. Then the hunt began for not only bodies but pieces of the aircraft so that a cause could be determined. Rodgers also said no intact body was found either, only parts. There were 111 passengers and seven crew aboard the flight. Authorities scrambled to get organized. "In what was the parish of Ste-Therese-de-Blainville, there was one police officer, Mr. Aubertin, who somehow maintained security," said Rodgers, who also oversees recreation for the town. "But he was quick with people who tried to rob the dead and it's said he even had to fire a few shots into the air to deter some people from making off with watches or wallets." There have been only two air crashes in Canada more devastating than the one in 1963. On Dec. 12, 1985, the crash of Arrow Air Flight 1285 in Gander, Nfld., left 256 dead. Swissair Flight 111 crashed in the Atlantic Ocean off Nova Scotia on Sept. 2, 1998, killing 229. Page, whose family was living in Leamington, Ont., at the time, says he grappled with his father's sudden death for years and that five years ago he sought to find out how others were handling the tragedy. "The numbers were so overwhelming that I think that people felt to some extent connected but at the same time, in 1963, isolated." He explained that while the crash happened in Quebec, most of the victims were from Ontario and the West. "The families really were separated and didn't grieve together particularly," he explained. "There's been a complete range of emotions that I've experienced from people who have said to me 50 years after the fact 'I can't talk to you. It's still too sore, it's too raw a memory' — (compared) to others who are here today to join together and remember." Page has since helped compile the story of the crash and its victims in a book, "Voices From A Forgotten Tragedy." There's also a website dedicated to the crash. Page recalled that he wondered about his own grief for a long time. "I didn't feel I had grieved appropriately. I didn't remember a lot of tears and, in looking back now, I've come to realize that what happened was I emotionally shut down. (It took) this project and about 48 more years for me to experience that emotional grief and release." The crash has also marked the community where it happened. Blainville Mayor Richard Perreault said in a message on his city's website that the memory of the crash is still fresh for many and he has heard from people who tell him about a friend or relative who witnessed rescue efforts. Rodgers echoed the mayor's feelings, saying that any resident who was around at the time has a memory of the historic incident, regardless of age. "In one way or another, everyone has been pretty much touched by that event and, even today when we talk to people, memories are quite vivid." An exhibit on the crash is also on display at the Joseph-Filion museum and relatives of the victims will be able to to take shuttle buses Saturday to see the crash site and a memorial plaque installed at the local cemetery. Trans-Canada Air Lines, which later became Air Canada, created a memorial garden near the crash site. Saturday 30 November 2013 http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Relatives+mark+50th+anniversary+TransCanada+Lines+crash/9229811/story.html

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Rescuers find 8 bodies in Indonesian landslide

Eight bodies were found on Sunday and a person remained missing after landslides on Saturday night in North Sumatra province of Indonesia, official said.

Heavy rains were blamed for the disaster in Berastagi sub- district of Tanah Karo district at about 20:30 p.m. Jakarta time, said Bowo Asa, senior official of the provincial disaster management and mitigation agency.

"Eight corpses were found this (Sunday) morning. Three of those are children. Another child is still missing," he told Xinhua over phone from the province.

Most of the bodies were pulled from the wreckage of homes at the slope of a hill after being crumpled by piles of soil, said Asa.

Searching for the missing child has been underway, he said.

Heavy rain has often triggered widespread flooding and landslide across much of Indonesia, a vast archipelago country with a population of over 238 million.

Sunday 1 December 2013

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/xinhua-news-agency/131201/1st-ld-writethruu-rescuers-find-8-bodies-indonesian-landslid

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Two months on, unidentified body lies preserved at JJ morgue

Two months after the Babu Genu building collapse in the Dockyard Road area, the body of an unidentified male continues to remain in the cold preservation unit of the state-run JJ hospital's morgue.

The man, along with 61 residents in the building, had succumbed to suffocation and multiple injuries after the ground-plus-four-storey building caved in early morning on September 27. All 61 bodies were identified and claimed by respective families.

According to the hospital's forensic department, the body was sent for DNA analysis to Kalina Forensic Science Laboratory more than a month ago. Dr M K Malve, director of the laboratory, said, "The genetic analysis results have been handed over to the Sewri police. If a relative comes to claim the body, DNA sampling can be done and the body can be handed over."

A fortnight after the collapse, claims of a BMC peon — Vijay Narayan Jadhav's body going missing — had come up. While Vijay Narayan was the same age as the unidentified body, his uncle Vijay Dhondu Jadhav claimed that it was not his nephew's.

"We have a capacity for storing 130 bodies, of which the hospital has space for 45 bodies and police department can keep 85. Until we get a police notification, we will keep it preserved," said Dr Ashok Rathore, acting dean in JJ hospital.

Usually, a body is kept for a week or so, this body has been preserved for two months now. Sunil Babar, additional commissioner of police, Wadala division, said, "We usually wait for a month at the most and then cremate unidentified bodies. However, this case is serious and anyone can come to claim the body as well as BMC's compensation. Therefore investigations are still on." The only identification known to the doctors, so far, is that the body may be of a Muslim in his early 40s.

Thursday 28 November 2013

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/two-months-on-unidentified-body-lies-preserved-at-jj-morgue/1200549/

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Nine killed after roof collapses at Chinese factory under tons of heavy snow

Nine people have been killed in China after a factory roof collapsed under tons of fresh snow.

China's state news agency Xinhua said the accident in the country's northeast Heilongjiang Province happened at around 1.10pm yesterday in blizzard conditions, in the city of Mudanjiang.

Nine people were buried in the rubble of the three-storey factory, where workers assembled household goods in round-the-clock shifts.

Rescuers worked for nine hours to clear the debris, but have now recovered all of the bodies.

Survivors said they ran for their lives after hearing cracking and groaning as the roof caved in.

Officials are now preparing to check the safety of buildings across the city as very heavy snowfall puts extra pressure on standing structures.

Heavy snow has been falling across northeastern China, forcing roads to close and leading to flights being cancelled.

Wednesday 27 November 2013

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/chinese-factory-roof-collapse-nine-2856947

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Boat with Haitian migrants capsize in Bahamas; up to 30 feared dead

A sailboat passing through the southern Bahamas islands with about 150 Haitian migrants on board capsized after running aground, killing up to 30 people and leaving the rest clinging to the vessel for hours, authorities said Tuesday.

The exact death toll remained uncertain. Authorities on the scene confirmed at least 20 dead and determined the number could reach 30 based on accounts from survivors, said Lt. Origin Deleveaux, a Royal Bahamas Defense Force spokesman.

The remains of five victims had been recovered and the Bahamas military and police were working with the U.S. Coast Guard to recover additional bodies as they pulled survivors from the stranded sailboat.

"Right now, we are just trying to recover as many bodies as we possibly can," Deleveaux said.

Authorities believe the migrants had been at sea for eight to nine days with limited food and water and no life jackets, Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Gabe Somma said. Many were severely dehydrated when the first rescue crews reached them. The boat, in addition to being overloaded, likely encountered rough weather, Deleveaux said.

"It was obviously just grossly overloaded, unbalanced, unseaworthy," Somma said. "An incredibly dangerous voyage."

The capsizing of overloaded vessels occurs with disturbing frequency in the area, most recently in mid-October when four Haitian women died off Miami. There have also been fatal incidents near the Turks and Caicos Islands, between Haiti and the Bahamas, and in the rough Mona Passage that divides the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.

"Unfortunately we see these types of tragedies occur on a monthly basis," Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Ryan Doss said. "Every year we see hundreds of migrants needlessly lose their lives at sea taking part in these dangerous and illegal voyages."

It's common enough that the Coast Guard recently developed a public service announcement that will run on TV and radio in Florida, Haiti, the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic urging people not to risk the deadly ocean voyages.

This latest incident occurred late Monday near Harvey Cays, about 80 miles southeast of New Providence, the island that includes the capital of Nassau, and 260 miles southeast of Miami.

Fishermen spotted the dangerously overloaded sailboat and alerted the Bahamas military, which asked the Coast Guard for assistance in locating the vessel, Somma said. By the time it was spotted, the 40-foot boat had run aground in an area dotted with tiny outcroppings and reefs and then capsized.

Photos taken by the Coast Guard showed people clinging to every available space on the overturned vessel. Some were taken to a clinic on nearby Staniel Cay for treatment for dehydration.

By late Tuesday afternoon, the Coast Guard and Bahamian authorities had rescued about 110 people, including 19 women. Deleveaux said there were no children on board. Smugglers will often seek to blend in with the migrants when they are captured and authorities did not announce any arrests.

Migrants have long traversed the Bahamian archipelago to reach the United States. Thousands have also settled in the Bahamas in recent years. Deleveaux said those rescued from the boat near Harvey Cays would be taken to a military base on New Providence, processed and then repatriated to Haiti.

Wednesday 27 November 2013

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/11/26/10-haitian-migrants-die-100-cling-to-capsized-boat-in-bahamas/

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Search teams in Tacloban in need of K-9 units

Search and retrieval teams in typhoon-devastated Tacloban City are in need of more K-9 units as the search for bodies feared buried under the rubble has yet to be finished.

Bureau of Fire Protection Region 8 Director Pablito Cordeta, who also heads Task Force Retrieval, said two K-9 units from the United States, 4 from The Netherlands, and 2 from South Korea are set to wrap up their work and leave the city.

Cordeta said the K-9 units are important in retrieving the bodies which are now in decomposing.

The BFP has so far retrieved 2,004 bodies in Tacloban.

A separate and official government report from the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) said 1,932 died in Tacloban City, while 594 remain missing.

In its 6 a.m. Wednesday update, the NDRRMC said 207 more have been confirmed dead in Tacloban; 46 in the rest of Leyte province; and 7 in Eastern Samar. This brings the death toll from the typhoon to 5,500.

The death toll is expected to rise further as 1,757 remain missing: 1,668 in Leyte; 38 in Samar; 20 in Eastern Samar; 14 in Antique; 6 in Capiz; 5 in Cebu; 4 in Iloilo and 1 each in Guimaras and Capiz.

The number of injured rose to 26,136.

Wednesday 27 November 2013

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/regions/11/27/13/search-teams-tacloban-need-k-9-units

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