SEOUL: Recovery teams should try to wrap up their search for bodies from South Korea’s ferry disaster by the weekend. Prime Minister Chung Hong-Won said yesterday, three weeks after the ship sank with hundreds of schoolchildren on board.
With 35 bodies yet to be recovered, the moment is fast arriving when the authorities will have to make a call on stopping the underwater search in order to raise the ferry, which was carrying 476 people when it capsized on April 16.
The conditions the recovery teams are working in are extremely challenging, and the death of a diver on Tuesday is likely to fuel debate as to how long the search should continue.
The deciding factor so far has been the sensitivities of the relatives of those still unaccounted for.
The coastguard has promised that the giant floating cranes to be used in the salvage operation will only be brought in once all the bodies trapped in the submerged ship have been retrieved.
Japan’s snow crushes planes
TOKYO: At least three US Navy P-3 Orion surveillance planes were crushed “beyond repair” when unusually heavy snowfall swept across Japan in February, reported yesterday.
The planes were inside a contractor’s hangar near the US Navy air facility in Atsugi, west of Tokyo, the Pacific Stars and Stripes said in its online edition, citing a US Naval spokeswoman.
A US Orion and six P3 variants from the Japanese defence forces brought in for repairs or checks were also there.
The 550-foot long hangar with an ageing 50-foot high roof collapsed under snow, damaging most of the Japanese planes as well, the daily said, without saying the exact date of the incident.
Heavy snowfall struck across the Japanese islands on and off over weeks in February, killing 26 people, injuring more than 1,000 others and damaging more than 600 houses.
Tokyo and its vicinity on the Pacific board are not used to heavy snow storms.
Lawmaker in blast nabbed
KATHMANDU: Nepalese police have arrested a lawmaker for allegedly masterminding a bomb attack that killed four people and injured dozens of others in 2012, an officer said on Monday.
Sanjay Kumar Sah, a former government minister, was arrested late Saturday over the attack targeting 150 protesters rallying in the southern city of Janakpur, 20 kilometres from the Indian border.
Police accuse Sah of holding a personal grudge against one of the protest leaders, who escaped unharmed when the bomb strapped to a motorbike exploded in April 2012, killing four and injuring nearly 30 others.
Agencies
