Tuesday 25 September 2012

Vietnam finds mass grave of communist soldiers

HANOI, Vietnam — Farmers have found a grave containing the remains of at least 20 communist soldiers killed during the Vietnam War.

Military officer Nguyen Van Phat said Tuesday that the bodies were recovered from a rubber plantation in the southern province of Dong Nai. Farmers hunting for scrap metal there found the bodies last week.

The remains have not been identified. Phat says authorities also found 17 pairs of rubber sandals and 23 hammocks among the remains.

He says the soldiers were believed to have been killed while attacking an airport in 1969.

Some 3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans died during the war, which ended in 1975 when communists overran Saigon, then capital of South Vietnam.

The remains of around 300,000 North Vietnamese soldiers have yet to be recovered.

Tuesday 25 September 2012

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501712_162-57519536/vietnam-finds-mass-grave-of-communist-soldiers/

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22 Chinese coal miners trapped in accidents

Efforts to rescue a total of 22 miners, who were trapped following three separate accidents in different parts of China, continued on Monday.

Eleven people were trapped after a fire at Longshan Coal Mine in Shuangyashan, Heilongjiang province, on Saturday morning. Residents reported the accident to authorities on Sunday.

An initial investigation showed that 13 people were working underground at the time. Two were lifted to safety, according to a spokesman at the rescue team’s headquarters.

A team reached the coal mine to oversee the work, led by Wang Shuhe, deputy director of the State Administration of Work Safety, on Sunday.

The county’s coal management authorities had ordered the mine to suspend production on Sept 3, a day after its license expired, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Illegal production is being blamed for the accident, authorities said.

Rescuers extinguished the underground fire on Sunday night. The temperature of the underground area of the mine had been lowered and wind flow in the site was stable as of Monday afternoon.

Rescuers were still working to find the 11 missing miners.

Vice-governor of Heilongjiang Zhang Jianxing said late on Sunday that the operation of small mines in the province will be suspended for two months for inspection and similar problems will be rectified.

On Sunday, the Shuangya-shan government said it will examine potential safety hazards in all mines in the city, and the operation of ones near the Longshan mine will be halted immediately.

Saturday saw flooding at a coal mine in Jidong county, also in Heilongjiang, which trapped six miners.

Another five miners were trapped when a ceiling collapsed at a mine in Zibo, Shandong province, on Sunday.

The accident occurred at about 9:50 am at Dongtai Mining Co. A rescue team involving several departments was set up to find the miners.

As of Monday morning, no miners had been found and rescuers were still making efforts to search, said Wang Hong, an official at Zibo’s coal industry administration bureau.

Meanwhile, a gas explosion injured 13 miners at a coal mine in Anshun, Guizhou province, on Sunday night.

Within a month, two serious coal mine accidents have led to the deaths of more than 60 people.

A coal mine in Panzhihua, Sichuan province, was struck by a gas blast on Aug 29, trapping about one-third of the 154 miners who were working underground at the time. Forty-eight people died.

According to a report by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate on Monday, four safety management officials were detained in the wake of the accident.

Another accident at Gaokeng Coal Mine in Pingxiang, Jiangxi province, killed 15 miners on Sept 2.

According to the work safety administration, 41 accidents triggered by gas blasts have happened in China’s coal mines as of July this year, causing 149 deaths.

Compared with the same period last year, 36 fewer accidents occurred and 142 fewer miners were killed.

Tuesday 25 September 2012

http://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-09/25/content_15779516.htm

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Nepal avalanche hit climbers as they were sleeping

KATMANDU, Nepal -- Mountaineers who survived a pre-dawn avalanche high on the world's eighth-tallest peak say they waited an hour for the sun to come up and then saw pieces of tents and bodies of victims strewn around them on the snow.

Italian climber Silvio Mondinelli said he and a fellow mountaineer were asleep when they heard a violent sound and felt their tent start to slide.

"It was only a few seconds and we did not know what happened, but we had slid more than 200 meters (650 feet)," Mondinelli told The Associated Press on Monday. "All we wanted was for it to stop.”

The avalanche hit at about 4 a.m. Sunday while more than two dozen climbers were sleeping in tents at Camp 3 on Mount Manaslu in northern Nepal.

At least nine climbers were killed and six are believed still missing. Ten climbers survived, but many of them were injured and were flown to hospitals by rescue helicopters.

Helicopters flew over the slopes on Monday to search for the missing mountaineers as climbers and guides searched the mountainsides on foot. Rescuers brought down eight bodies -- four French, one each from Germany, Italy and Spain and a Nepali guide -- and were trying to retrieve the ninth from the 7,000-meter (22,960-foot) area where the avalanche struck, police Chief Basanta Bahadur Kuwar said.

Three French climbers and two Germans were transported to hospitals in Katmandu on Sunday. Two Italians were flown there on Monday -- Mondinelli, who has climbed the world's 14 highest peaks, and fellow mountaineer Christian Gobbi.

Mondinelli said a third Italian climber and their Sherpa guide, who were both sleeping in another tent, were buried by the avalanche and died.

Gobbi said they could not see at first when they looked out of their torn tent because it was pitch dark and they had no light.

"We found someone's boots and put them on," he said.

When the sun rose an hour later, they saw parts of tents scattered across the snow, along with people who had been killed or injured.

They said they were able to assist the injured with the help of Sherpa guides who came up from lower mountain camps. Those who could walk made their way down to the base camp while those who were injured were picked up by helicopters.

At least three of the victims were from the French Alps town of Chamonix, a hub for climbers on Mont Blanc and nearby peaks. An avalanche on a route to the summit of Mont Blanc in July killed nine experienced climbers.

Two French climbers were still unaccounted for as of Monday afternoon, the French Foreign Ministry said. The rescue effort was called off "at least for today, probably definitively," Christian Trommsdorff, president of the French Mountain Guides Syndicate, said on BFM television.

A total of 231 climbers and guides were on the mountain but not all were at the higher camps hit by the avalanche.

Nepal Mountaineering Department chief Balkrishan Ghimire identified the eight recovered bodies as Fabrice Priez, Philippe Lucien Bos, Catherine Marie Andree Richard and Ludovic Paul Nicolas Challeat of France; German Christian Mittermeyer; Italian Alberto Magliano; Spaniard Marti Roirg Gasull; and Nepali Dawa Dorji.

Sunday's avalanche came at the start of Nepal's autumn climbing season, when the end of the monsoon rains makes weather in the high Himalayas unpredictable. Spring is a more popular mountaineering season, when hundreds of climbers crowd the high Himalayan peaks.

Mount Manaslu, which is 8,156 meters (26,760 feet) high, has attracted more climbers recently because it is considered one of the easier peaks to climb among the world's tallest mountains.

Nepal has eight of the 14 highest peaks in the world. Climbers have complained in recent years that conditions on the mountains have deteriorated and risks of accidents have increased, with some laying the blame on global warming.

Avalanches are not very frequent on Mount Manaslu, but in 1972 one struck a team of climbers and killed six Koreans and 10 Nepalese guides.

Ang Tshering of the Asian Trekking agency in Katmandu, who has equipped hundreds of expeditions, said low snow levels and the increased number of climbers on Manaslu have made climbing conditions difficult.

"It used to be a low-risk mountain in the past but now that has all changed," Tshering said, adding that conditions have become more unpredictable.

Tuesday 25 September 2012

http://www.king5.com/news/Nepal-avalanche-hit-climbers-as-they-were-sleeping-171037391.html

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