The US Saturday warned its staff to send families out of Juarez, Mexico, where it has a consulate, shortly before three of its staff were killed in drive-by shootings in the border city, famous for its violence. The US is now sending eight FBI investigators to join Mexican agents looking into the shootings, and US citizens are being warned to avoid the area. Gunfights have broken out in other border areas, miles away, as drug wars appear to be stepping up.
Reports are appearing that well over 100 people died in Nigeria during the 6-7 March weekend when men armed with machetes swooped down from the hills to attack villages, killing mostly women and children, it appears. The BBC reports that the death toll in what is being called revenge killings may be as high as 500 and AllAfrica puts it at 200 or more. The government initially announced a figure of 100 dead in one of the worst recent clashes near Jos, an area where relationships between Muslims and Christians have long been tense. Acting President Goodluck Jonathan has placed troops on alert.
Louis Majesty at sea (photo: Louis Cruise)
A Louis Cruise ship with 1,350 passengers and nearly 600 crew on board, the Louis Majesty, was hit by what the company has called “rogue waves” of up to eight metres, off the northeast coast of Spain. Two people were killed and six injured, with windows broken in the saloon and water taken on board. The ship has pulled into Barcelona, but will later continue its voyage to Genoa, Italy. The captain says there were winds up to 100kph in the area.
Links to other sites: BBC, El Pais (Spa), Louis Cruise
The number of deaths is rising from a Nato bombing mission that killed at least 33 civilians. The air strike was against a suspected “insurgent” convoy but many women and children were found among the dead.
Details are still coming in of a rush-hour commuter train crash outside Brussels Monday morning 15 February: at least 20 people have died, according to the mayor of Halle, 15 km southwest of Brussels. A large number of cars are over-turned and spilling off the tracks, TV footage shows. One witness said one of the trains did not brake at all, but the cause of the crash is not yet known. Service in and out of Brussels by rail is seriously disrupted, with power lines reportedly affected by the collision.
Links to other sites: AFP, France2 (Fre) TV, La Libre Belgique (Fre) with live coverage, NPR
A massive avalanche in Salang, a nearly 4,000 metre pass connecting Kabul and the north of Afghanistan, has killed at least 15 and possibly up to 30, with some 70 people reported by the Defense Ministry to be injured. Official and local reports vary widely. The road along the pass is heavily traveled and 1,500 people stranded by the avalanche have been rescued despite additional smaller avalanches and heavy snow, which have hampered rescue operations.
Links to other sites: News.com.au, Australia, MSNBC
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A group of researchers based at Chuv (University Hospitals) in Lausanne have published the results of a 23-year study of Swiss homicide-suicides in The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology (28 January 2010 issue). Their conclusion: a stricter weapons law would help reduce the number of such deaths. The study was undertaken in the context of an ongoing national debate over military laws that require soldiers to keep guns at home. Switzerland has a national militia.
Four foreigners are reportedly among seven people killed when a bomb exploded near a school in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province, but initial reports are contradictory. The bomb may have hit a convoy, in the Lower Dir district, traveling to the opening of a girls school but other reports say the blast came during the opening ceremony of the school. Two of the dead may have been schoolgirls, but it seems clear that many of the nearly 50 injured were students. The BBC reports that the four Westerners killed were aid workers, citing police, but other sources say there were three Westerners and they may have been US soldiers. The district is a Taliban stronghold.
Avalanches in several cantons catch snowboarders, hikers, skiers Sunday 31 January
Grimentz is in the Val d'Anniviers, Valais
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A 24-year-old Vaud man was killed by an avalanche Sunday 31 January while snowboarding off-piste in Grimentz with three friends. They were just 100 metres from a groomed piste when the avalanche caught and buried him. The other three were not hit by the avalanche.
Angola will continue to host football’s African Cup of Nations, but Togo confirmed that it is pulling out of the Cup after a deadly attack on its team by separatists in northern Angola, 9 January. Three non-playing members of the Togo team delegation died in the attack and the rest of the group has flown home but the team has reportedly asked that its slot remain open.The tournament opened Sunday 10 January with a “thrilling” match, reports AllAfrica, with Mali “forcing a stunning 4-4 draw.|
Links to other sites: AllAfrica, Financial Times
A gas leak at a petrochemical plant in China’s northwest Gansu province Friday morning 8 January led to an explosion that has killed at least five people. It is the latest in a string of deadly gas leaks in the country, in just over two weeks: a leak 5 January at a steel factory in northern Hebei province killed 21 workers who were putting together a furnace, according to CNN, which says company leaders have admitted to initially under-reporting the death toll. And a leak at a steel plant in the same region 23 December killed 17.
St Louis, Missouri, USA (GenevaLunch) - A gunman killed three people and injured at least five others, three of them critically, at the offices of Swiss-Swedish multinational ABB in St Louis Thursday 7 January, according to police reports. The man entered the factory at 06:30. ABB was unable to give details or confirm more than the police information to wire services, at 19:35 Swiss time, saying the situation was still unclear. Initial media reports in the US indicate that the gunman was among those killed, and that he was a former employee who was in litigation with the company, but none of this has been confirmed officially.
Links to other sites: ABB, CNN, ats/Romandie (Fre)
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Three bodies were found Tuesday 5 July shortly before noon by a search team hunting for three people still missing following two avalanches Sunday morning in the Dietigtal region of the Bernese Oberland. Four people had already died from the avalanches, bringing the death toll to seven.
The three individuals, two men and a woman, were found in the cone (bottom) of the avalanche. Sixty people were involved in this morning’s search, mainly from the Secours Alpin Suisse Bern unit and the Swiss army’s mountain research team.
Two former US officials have confirmed to National Public Radio that the seven CIA agents and one Jordanian agent killed in Afghanistan the last week of December 2009 were the victims of an Al-Qaeda double agent. NBC News had earlier identified him as Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a 36-year old doctor from Zarqa, Jordan, arrested by Jordanian intelligence a year ago and who was considered by his government and the US secret service to have been turned into their own agent. The identity of the killer is prompting numerous questions in the media about undercover operations and their effectiveness, just as a report published by the Washington think tank, Center for a New American Security, questions the work of the CIA in Afghanistan.
Links to other sites: Center for a New American Security report, BBC, NPR
Avalanche rescue operation Sunday, Diemtigtal, canton Bern, Switzerland
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Police in canton Bern say that a fourth person rescued from an avalanche in the Bernese Oberland region has died, and three are now listed as missing. The accident took place Sunday morning 3 January in an area not generally considered to be a high risk zone. A first person went missing when a ski touring group was caught by the avalanche and shortly after rescuers arrived a second avalanche hit the area, burying several others, including one of the Rega helicopter service doctors, who died later in hospital.
TSR reports Monday morning that the three skiers suspected of setting off the 27 December avalanche that rolled over a groomed slope in Anzeres have been arrested. Valais police have not yet made an official announcement.
Background story, Bern avalanche, GenevaLunch
Background story, Anzeres avalanche, GenevaLunch
Update 23:25 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Four people were killed by avalanches Sunday 3 January, two near Diemtigtal, canton Bern and one in Bagnes, Valais. Seven others were injured, some of them critically, in Bern and one other person was hospitalized following the Valais avalanche. In a separate incident, Valais police have reportedly arrested three young snowboarders who appear to have set off an avalanche near Zermatt Thursday 30 December that caught a group of seven, including five children.
The deadly accident in Bern occurred in an area that is not considered particularly at risk, although the Swiss avalanche and snow research institute has had level 3 “considerable danger” warnings out for much of the Swiss Alps during the past week. One member of a group of ski tourers was caught by a first avalanche at about 11:30 Sunday, and emergency services were immediately called. While the rescue operation was underway a second avalanche occurred. A Rega helicopter service doctor and one other skier were found and taken to hospital, where they died. Another skier was dead when uncovered. Eight people were found alive, but some of them are in critical condition Sunday night, according to Bern police. Eight helicopters were used in the rescue operation, to carry rescue teams, doctors and avalanche search dogs to the area.
The search was called off at 18:00 due to weather and snow conditions. Police in Bern ask that anyone waiting for news of ski tourers in the area phone them at +41 31 634 3434.
The other avalanche Sunday occurred near the Tête de la Payanne, in the Val de Bagnes region near Verbier, in Valais, about 14:00.
Four people are dead after a lone gunman went on a shooting spree in the Espoo shopping centre near Helsinki, Finland Thursday morning 31 December. Another is injured. The man, who reportedly has a criminal record, opened fire on the second floor of the mall. The Times, UK, reports that “there are 1.6 million firearms in private hands in Finland, which has a population of just 5.3 million. It ranks in the top five nations in the world for civilian gun ownership.”
Links to other sites: The Times, UK,
Protest marches involving what several Western media are calling “thousands” of people turned ugly in Iran Sunday 27 December, as at least four people were killed when police opened fire. One of them was reportedly the nephew of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, but Al Jazeera notes that the report cannot be independently verified, as foreign media are banned from covering street protests. The government told media that police were not carrying weapons. The marches took place in Teheran, but there appear to also have been protests in Isfahan and Najafabad. Government supporters criticized the protesters for taking political action on Ashoura, a religious event marked by Shia Muslims that commemorates the 7th century death of Prophet Muhammad’s grandson.
Links to other sites: Al Jazeera, BBC, Jerusalem Post
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A man died when his car crashed into a tree in Geneva and another when his car rolled into a field in Valais, another man died while base-jumping in Lauterbrunnen, and a railway worker was run over by a train at the Zurich train station, in a 24-hour period Monday and Tuesday 22 December. The series of unrelated deadly accidents brought to 21 the number of people who have died on Geneva roads in 2009 and to seven the number of people who have killed themselves base-jumping in Lauterbrunnen in 2009.
The Geneva driver was a 57-year-old Russian man, resident in Geneva, driving a gray BMW. He was heading from the Place des Nations shortly after 04:00 on the Route de Ferney when he lost control of his vehicle.
Two bombs have killed 49 people, unofficial sources report, with the death toll rising as many of the scores of injured are in critical condition, in Lahore Pakistan. It is unclear if the blasts were two suicide bombs or one, followed by a remote-control device exploding in the heart of Lahore’s commercial centre. One bomb went off in a crowded market, where shops and motorcycles quickly caught fire, and the other near a bank, late Monday 7 December.
Eight students have died and 26 are injured, the result of a stampede in a middle school stairwell in Hunan province, China. Authorities say that a student tripped and fell as students were rushing out of evening classes, causing others to fall. Seven boys and one girl, ages 11-14, died, apparently from head injuries or being smothered, based on students’ descriptions of the accident. The school’s 3,500 students were rushing back to their dorms and most used one stairwell to avoid rainy weather, according to Xinhua, although the school has four exits. The Chinese news service says the private school has a reputation as one of the best in the region of Xiangxiang, a city of 900,000, and most of the students are from well-off families in the area. The head of the school and chairman of its board, as well as the local education director, are being held by police while the accident is investigated. The school remained open Tuesday, but the stairwell, less than 1.5 metres wide according to Xinhua, was cordoned off by police.
Links to others sites: CNN, Xinhua
Russia is holding a day of mourning for the 112 people, now all identified, who died when a club caught fire Friday night 4 December in the city of Perm in the Urals. The fire appears to have been started by fireworks inside the club, officials say. Some deaths were caused by inhaling deadly plastic fumes, others by the smoke and flames. Four people are under arrest but a fifth is fighting for his life, one of the 123 injured who are hospitalized. The government has banned club fireworks and is reviewing safety legislation.
Links to other sites: Moscow Times, Ria Novosti
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The two guides who worked with a military team scaling the Jungfrau when an avalanche hit and killed six in the group now face the possibility of a new trial. The prosecutor in the case Wednesday 25 November filed an appeal against the judgement last Thursday that acquitted the two guides, who were awarded damages.
Background: Guides acquitted in Jungfrau military accident, 20 November 2009, GenevaLunch
(AP video) A ferry with more than 242 people aboard sank in heavy seas off the island of Sumatra Sunday. A dramatic rescue operation brought some 240 people to safety, but at least 29 people died, and it was clear that the ferry’s manifest did not list all the people aboard, not uncommon in a region where ferries are often over-crowded. A second ferry ran aground nearby, but its passengers are safe.
Links to other sites: AP/Yahoo, Reuters
A mine blast early Saturday 21 November in China’s northern Heilongjiang province is now known to have killed 104 miners, with another four still trapped in the coal mine where more than 500 people were working when gas levels suddenly rose. Worries over mine safety have been increasing in China, with several accidents in recent months, and authorities in Beijing have said they are improving conditions. But this latest accident, in a state-owned mine, is prompting even state media to raise the issue of safety.
