Mass funeral held
Ships scour crash site
DAWEI, Myanmar, June 10, (Agencies): Myanmar navy ships battled high winds on Saturday as they scoured the storm-whipped Andaman sea for wreckage from a military plane crash, bringing another body to shore as scores remained missing.
The Chinese-made Shaanxi Y8 aircraft was carrying 122 people, including children and other relatives of servicemen, when it disappeared while flying along Myanmar’s southern coast on Wednesday.
Navy vessels and local fishing trawlers have fought fierce monsoon weather as they search for bodies and traces of the plane.
A military vessel pulled another corpse from the waves on Saturday morning, bringing the number of retrieved dead to 33 as the search effort stretched into a fourth day.
“A military ship retrieved a new dead body,” the army chief’s office said in a statement.
One man’s remains were also found late Friday while most of the other bodies were brought to shore on Thursday before severe monsoon weather set in, hampering search efforts.
Hundreds of distraught relatives have flocked to Dawei for mass cremation ceremonies, with desperate families waiting for news of those still unaccounted for, as hopes fade of finding survivors.
There has been no official explanation for the cause of the crash, one of several deadly incidents involving Myanmar military aircraft in recent years.
lawsuit, but found the tribunal closed and blocked by riot police vans.
Opposition lawmaker Delsa Solorzano told reporters that armed government supporters beat her group as it was leaving.
Clashes at daily protests by demonstrators calling for Maduro to quit over an
While monsoon season brings annual bouts of rainy weather, there were no reports of major storms along the plane’s flight path when it disappeared while flying from the southern city of Myeik to Yangon, Myanmar’s commercial hub.
China, as a friendly neighbour, shares Myanmar’s sorrow over the incident, President Xi Jinping told his counterpart U Htin Kyaw in a condolence message, state news agency Xinhua said late on Friday.
“Xi mourned the dead and extended sincere sympathy to the government and people of Myanmar, especially the families of the victims,” the agency added.
Earlier, heartbroken relatives gathered Friday for the funeral rites of the first victims of a military plane crash off Myanmar’s southern coast, as search teams battled heavy rains and churning waves to find scores more people presumed lost at sea.
Most of the dead retrieved from the Andaman Sea so far have been women and children after a fraught search by navy ships, planes and helicopters hampered by sweeping rains.
Hundreds gathered in a cemetery outside Dawei town on Friday afternoon to bid goodbye to loved ones whose bodies had been pulled from the water the previous day on San Hlan beach, a two hour drive away.
Chanting from Buddhist monks filled a hall used for the ceremonies as 10 flimsy wooden coffins were laid out.
economic crisis have left 66 people dead since April 1, prosecutors say. (AFP)
Mexico attack kills 6:
A four-monthold baby and a 17-year-old boy were among six people shot dead Friday at a house near the Mexican resort of Acapulco, authorities said.
Gunmen burst into the house in the small southern town of San Pedro Cacahuatepec and riddled it with gunfire, according to emergency officials.
Three women and a man were also killed in the hail of bullets. Three children were wounded — ages one, eight and 11.
Local media reports said some of the victims were from the same family.
Some witnesses blamed the attack on a vigilante group called the Union of Towns and Organizations of Guerrero State, or UPOEG. (AFP)