Dutch tourist killed in Malaysia cave floods, guide missing

CNA – AFP, 13 July 2019

Peter Hans Hovenkamp, 66, was from Utrecht in the central Netherlands.
(Photo: Sarawak Fire and Rescue Department)

KUALA LUMPUR: Flash floods killed a Dutch tourist in a popular cave located in the rugged Mulu National Park on Malaysia's Borneo island, an official said Saturday (Jul 13), as a search continues for a missing guide.

Local fire and rescue chief Law Poh Kiong identified the dead man as 66-year-old Peter Hans Hovenkamp from Utrecht in the central Netherlands.

"He died due to drowning following flash floods in the caves. His body was found in a river inside the cave and was taken to the Miri public hospital for a post-mortem on Saturday," he told AFP.

Law said a search-and-rescue operation involving 16 officers had been launched to locate 20-year local tour guide Roviezal Robin.

This handout from the Sarawak Fire and Rescue Department taken and released
on Jul 13, 2019 shows the body of Dutch tourist Peter Hans Hovenkamp being carried
out of Mulu National Park on the island of Borneo. (Photo: AFP/Sarawak Fire and
Rescue Department)

Eight other tourists in the same group "almost become victims" but fled to higher ground and escaped from being washed into the river, Law added.

Hovenkamp was reported missing on Friday while the group was touring the popular "Deer Cave", home to an estimated three million bats which form amazing patterns in the sky when they leave each dusk.

Mulu park, located in the remote Borneo jungle of Sarawak state and famous for its caves, cliffs and gorges, is a UNESCO world heritage site.

It sees thousands of visitors annually, particularly for its cooling rains during the summer months.

Law described the death as "a freak tragedy."

Holiday island mourns after bus crash kills 29 German tourists

Yahoo – AFP, Jerome Pin, April 18, 2019

The bus plunged down a 10-metre slope with around 50 people on board
(AFP Photo/STRINGER)

Caniço (Portugal) (AFP) - Portugal and Germany mourned on Thursday after 29 German tourists died when their bus tumbled down a slope and crashed into a house on the tourist island of Madeira.

Drone footage showed the mangled wreckage lying against a building on a hillside near the town of Canico, the vehicle's roof partially crushed and front window smashed.

Rescue workers attended to injured passengers on the grass where the bus rested nearby, some of them bearing bloodied head bandages and blood-stained clothes.

A woman who survived the accident said on the TVI television channel that the bus crashed after hitting a wall.

"It happened just after the bus started, one minute or a few seconds later. People were flying through the windows," said the woman, who was not named.

"Some people were crying for help and we could immediately see some people were dead," said her husband, who also survived the crash. "Help arrived very fast."

Rescue workers helped survivors at the crash site (AFP Photo/RUI SILVA)

Local authorities said most of the dead were aged in their 40s and 50s. Twelve men and 17 women were among the victims, an official at the Nelio Mendonca hospital, Tomasia Alves, told reporters.

They were among the more than one million tourists who visit the Atlantic islands off the coast of Morocco each year, attracted by their subtropical climate and rugged volcanic terrain.

"It is with sadness and dismay that I think of our compatriots and all the other people affected by the terrible bus accident in Madeira," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a statement.

"My sincere condolences go above all to those families that have lost loved ones in this tragedy," she added, thanking the Portuguese emergency services for their efforts.

The bus was only five years old and has been recently inspected, officials 

said (AFP Photo/RUI SILVA)

Investigation launched

Witnesses and officials said the 50-odd tourists had left their hotel on their way to the regional capital Funchal for dinner when the bus crashed on Wednesday.

Local media said two Portuguese nationals survived the crash: the driver and a tour guide.

Prosecutors have opened a probe. The vice-president of the regional government Pedro Calado said it was "premature" to attribute the cause of the accident.

He said the bus was five years old and had been recently inspected.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said he would travel to Madeira on Thursday with a team of doctors and psychologists to "speak personally with those affected".

The injured were "in a state of shock, with memories of terrible images. An injured woman said she had lost her partner," Ilse Everlien Berardo, the pastor at the German Evangelical church in Madeira, told Germany's RTL network.

Wellwishers left flowers for the victims (AFP Photo/MIGUEL RIOPA)

Frankfurt-based tour operator Trendtours said 51 of its customers were involved in the accident. Another company, Schauinsland, said it also had two customers in the crash.

The companies sent their condolences to victims' families and said they were sending teams to Madeira to offer support.

Trendtour said the bus had been hired by a local operator and crashed off the road "for a reason still unknown".

Makeshift morgue

A makeshift morgue has been set up at the airport in Funchal, local media reports said. Medical teams will be flown in from Lisbon to carry out autopsies.

German holidaymakers were the second largest group after British tourists to visit Madeira in 2017, according to Madeira's tourism office.

Madeira lies in the Atlantic off the coast of Morocco (AFP 

Photo/Maria-Cecilia REZENDE)

Known as the Pearl of the Atlantic and the Floating Garden, Madeira is home to just 270,000 inhabitants.

The Portuguese government decreed three days of national mourning.

"I express the sorrow and solidarity of all the Portuguese people in this tragic moment, and especially for the families of the victims who I have been told were all German," President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa told Portuguese television.

Alves said the hospital hoped to begin returning victims' bodies to their families by Saturday.

The last serious bus accident in Madeira occurred in December 2005, killing five Italian tourists in Sao Vicente.

At least 21 killed in Indonesia bus crash

Yahoo – AFP, September 8, 2018

Indonesian authorities blamed faulty brakes for the fatal crash that saw the bus
crash and plunge into a ravine in West Java (AFP Photo)

Bandung (Indonesia) (AFP) - At least 21 people died and several others were injured when a bus carrying domestic tourists crashed and plunged into a ravine on the Indonesian island of Java, police said Saturday.

The crash happened when the bus with 37 people on board was heading to a holiday spot in Sukabumi region, West Java.

The vehicle was seen speeding downhill and lost control before plunging into a 10-metre-deep ravine.

"There were 37 people on the bus, 21 of them died while the rest were injured," Galih Bayu Raditya, head of the traffic unit at the local police precinct, told AFP.

Victims who were injured had been taken to several local hospitals.

"We believe the accident happened because the brake failed to function," Raditya said, adding that the vehicle's road-worthy certificate had expired in 2016

The bus was part of a four-bus tour from Jakarta heading to a rafting spot in Pelabuhan Ratu, Sukabumi.

Passengers from other buses who arrived safely at the destination told the police they had seen smoke coming from the engine of the bus before it embarked on the journey.

Authorities have issued repeated warnings that the route where the accident occurred was not suitable for buses due to the narrowness of the road and multiple tight corners.

On Friday, another bus carrying 21 people also crashed in the same region, killing one and injuring the rest.

Transport accidents are common in Indonesia, where buses and trains are often old and badly maintained.

In February at least 27 people died when a bus with 40 domestic tourists on board hit a motorbike and crashed in Subang region, also in West Java.

Hajj to go ahead after Mecca crane collapse kills 107

Yahoo – AFP, Kamal Idris, 12 Sep 2015

A picture taken on September 11, 2015 in Saudi Arabia's holy Muslim city of Mecca

shows a construction crane after it crashed into the Grand Mosque (AFP Photo)

Mecca (Saudi Arabia) (AFP) - Saudi authorities said Saturday that Islam's annual hajj pilgrimage will go ahead despite a crane collapse that killed 107 people at Mecca's Grand Mosque, where crowds returned to pray a day after the tragedy.

Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims had already arrived in Mecca for the hajj, a must for all able-bodied Muslims who can afford it, when the massive red and white crane collapsed during rain and high winds on Friday.

Parts of the Grand Mosque, one of Islam's holiest sites, remained sealed off Saturday around the toppled crane, which also injured around 200 people when it fell into a courtyard.

But there was little mourning among pilgrims, who snapped pictures of the wreckage and continued with their prayers and rituals.

"I wish I had died in the accident, as it happened at a holy hour and in a holy place," Egyptian pilgrim Mohammed Ibrahim told AFP.

The accident occurred only about an hour before evening mahgrib prayers on the Muslim weekly day of prayer.

A massive construction crane crashed into Mecca's Grand Mosque in stormy

 weather on September 11, 2015, killing at least 107 people and injuring 238. (AFP

Photo/STR)

Om Salma, a Moroccan pilgrim, said "our phones have not stopped ringing since yesterday with relatives calling to check on us."

Indonesians and Indians were among those killed when the crane collapsed, while the injured included Malaysians, Egyptians and Iranians.

A Saudi official said the hajj, expected to start on September 21, would proceed despite the tragedy.

"It definitely will not affect the hajj this season, and the affected part will probably be fixed in a few days," said the official, who declined to be named.

An investigative committee has "immediately and urgently" begun searching for the cause of the collapse, the official Saudi Press Agency said.

The contractor has been directed to ensure the safety of all other cranes at the site, it added.

The cranes poke into the air over the sprawling mosque expansion taking place beneath the Mecca Royal Clock Tower, the world's third-tallest building, at 601 metres (1,972 feet).

For years, work has been underway on a 400,000 square metre (4.3 million square feet) expansion of the Grand Mosque to allow it to accommodate up to 2.2 million people at once.

Abdel Aziz Naqoor, who said he works at the mosque, told AFP he saw the massive construction crane fall during the storm.

"If it weren't for Al-Tawaf bridge the injuries and deaths would have been worse," he said, referring to a covered walkway which broke the crane's fall and surrounds the holy Kaaba.

The Kaaba is a massive cube-shaped structure at the centre of the mosque towards which Muslims worldwide pray.

Saudi governer of the Mecca region Khaled al-Faisal (C) listens to aides of the

 Grand Mosque of Mecca after a construction crane crashed into it on 

September 11 (AFP Photo/STR)

A witness said the winds were so strong that they shook his car and tossed billboards around.

'Act of God'

Pictures of the incident on Twitter showed bloodied bodies strewn across the courtyard, where part of the crane came to rest atop an ornate, arched and colonnaded section of the complex.

A video on YouTube showed people screaming and rushing around following a loud crash.

Saudis and foreigners lined up in the street to give blood in response to the tragedy.

Irfan al-Alawi, co-founder of the Mecca-based Islamic Heritage Research Foundation, suggested that authorities were negligent by having a series of cranes overlooking the mosque.

"They do not care about the heritage, and they do not care about health and safety," he told AFP.

Alawi is an outspoken critic of redevelopment at the holy sites, which he says is wiping away tangible links to the Muslim Prophet Mohammed.

But an engineer for the Saudi Binladin Group, the developer, told AFP the crane was installed in "an extremely professional way" and there was no technical problem.

"It was an act of God", he said.

A picture taken on October 5, 2014, shows construction cranes at the

 Grand mosque in Mecca. (AFP Photo/Mohammed Al-Shaikh)

Saudi Binladin Group belongs to the family of the late Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Sheikh Ahmed al-Ghamdi, former head of Mecca's religious police, told AFP the accident is a "test" from God.

"We need to accept what happened," he said, calling at the same time for a thorough investigation.

Condolences came in from around the world, including from Arab leaders, as well as from Britain, Canada, India and Nigeria.

This was not the first tragedy to strike Mecca pilgrims, though the hajj has been nearly incident-free in recent years.

In 2006, several hundred died in a stampede during the Stoning of the Devil ritual in nearby Mina, following a similar incident two years earlier.

1 Dead, 1 Missing in Bogor Rafting Accident

Jakarta Globe, Vento Saudale, Feb 02, 2015

The river Ciliwung in Bogor district, seen in a March 2013 file photo.
(JG Photo/Vento Saudale)

Bogor. A rafting accident on a West Java river on Sunday killed one person while another remained missing on Monday.

The incident happened on the Cianteun river in Karekel village, in the Leuwiliang subdistrict of Bogor, on Sunday afternoon when a group of eight people were rafting along the river.

The head of the Bogor Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD)’s emergency and logistic division, Budi Aksomo, said that six raft passengers survived the ordeal. Several agencies, including the police and the military, were working together to find Yuaningsih, the missing passenger, while the body of  Handoyo, the dead victim, has been returned to his home in Bogor.

“One victim is still missing,” Budi said on Sunday evening. “We’re temporarily halting the search effort but it will be resumed tomorrow.”

Local police have been questioning witnesses about the incident to find out what went wrong. But Leuwiliang Police Chief Adj. Comr. Asep Triono said that the incident shouldn’t have happened.

“Operators of water activities should know that the water levels rise when it rains,” Asep said.

Indonesia is currently experiencing the peak of its rainy season.