Massive ferry fire kills and injures dozens in southern Bangladesh
DHAKA, Bangladesh — A massive fire swept through a crowded river ferry in Bangladesh early Friday, leaving at least 39 people dead and 70 injured, officials said.
It took 15 fire engines two hours to control the fire and another eight to cool down the vessel, according to fire officer Kamal Uddin Bhuiyan, who led the rescue operation. Afterward, the blackened hull of the ferry sat anchored at the river’s edge. Many anxious relatives gathered on the banks, while divers continued to search the waters.
The blaze broke out around 3 a.m. on the MV Avijan-10, which was carrying 800 passengers, many of whom were traveling to visit family and friends for the weekend, officials said.
“I was sleeping on the deck and woke up hearing screams and a loud noise,” survivor Anisur Rahman said, adding that he saw smoke coming from the back of the ferry. “I jumped into the freezing water of the river in the thick fog, like many other passengers, and swam to the riverbank.”
Police officer Moinul Haque said rescuers recovered 37 bodies from the river, while two people died from burn injures on the way to the hospital. All of the 70 injured were hospitalized, including some with severe burns.
Ferries are a leading means of transportation in Bangladesh, which is crisscrossed by about 130 rivers, and accidents involving the vessels are common, often blamed on overcrowding or lax safety rules. The ferry was traveling from Dhaka, the capital, to Barguna, about 155 miles to the south.
Migrant boat tragedies: At least six people died and more than a dozen were believed missing after a migrant boat capsized in the Aegean Sea late Friday, bringing to at least 20 the combined death toll from three accidents in as many days involving migrant boats in Greek waters.
The sinkings came as smugglers increasingly favor a perilous route from Turkey to Italy, which avoids Greece’s heavily patrolled eastern Aegean islands that for years were at the forefront of the country’s migration crisis.
The coast guard said 57 people were rescued in Friday’s deadly incident after a sailboat capsized some 5 miles off the island of Paros, in the central Aegean. Survivors told the coast guard that about 80 people had been on the vessel.
Earlier, 11 people were confirmed dead after a sailboat Thursday struck a rocky islet some 145 miles south of Athens. The coast guard said Friday that 90 survivors, including 27 children, were rescued after spending hours on the islet.
And a search operation also continued for a third day in the central Aegean, where a boat carrying migrants sank near the island of Folegandros, killing at least three people.
Mandela auction flap: A South African Cabinet minister on Friday urged the cancellation of an upcoming U.S. auction of a key to the Robben Island prison cell where Nelson Mandela, the country’s first Black president, was long jailed for his opposition to apartheid.
The key is among Mandela memorabilia being sold Jan. 28 by Guernsey’s auction house in New York.
Most of the items were provided by members of Mandela’s family to raise funds for a museum and garden around his grave, while the key is being sold by Mandela’s former jailer who became his friend.
The auction house said the proceeds of the sale are to raise funds to build a 24-acre memorial garden and museum around Mandela’s burial site. Mandela’s oldest daughter, Makaziwe Mandela-Amuah, approached Guernsey’s to hold an auction of Mandela memorabilia to help build the garden, said Arlan Ettinger, president of Guernsey’s.
The key to his former jail cell is one of three items offered for sale by Christo Brand, Mandela’s Robben Island jailer.
A draft of South Africa’s constitution that Mandela inscribed to Brand and an exercise bicycle Mandela used were also provided for the auction by Brand.
Calif. store shooting: The coroner’s office has identified the 14-year-old girl who was fatally shot by Los Angeles police Thursday when officers fired on an assault suspect and a bullet went through the wall and struck the girl as she was in a clothing store dressing room.
Police also fatally shot the suspect Thursday morning at a Burlington store in the North Hollywood area, police said.
The Los Angeles County coroner identified the girl as Valentina Orellana-Peralta. The suspect’s name has not yet been released.
LAPD officers have shot at least 37 people — 17 of them fatally — in 2021 after another police shooting Friday, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Those figures mark a dramatic rise in cases where officers shot or killed people in either of the last two years — 27 people were shot and seven of them killed by LA police in all of 2020. In 2019, officers shot 26 people, killing 12.
In the last week, LA officers have killed four people, the newspaper reported.
Baby saved at airport: A security officer leapt over conveyor belt rollers and saved a 2-month-old boy who stopped breathing at a security checkpoint at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, video shows.
The footage, released Thursday by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration, shows TSA officer Cecilia Morales springing into action to resuscitate the child Dec. 9 after his mother picked him up from a car carrier and noticed he wasn’t breathing.
Morales, an EMT who has been a TSA officer for about two months, told the agency she performed the infant version of the Heimlich maneuver, placing the baby face down on her arm and patting him on the back to get him breathing again.
It was the first time she had performed the technique on an infant, she said.
A pediatric EMT arrived a short time later to give the baby oxygen.
Ship outbreak: A COVID19 outbreak took place on a South Florida-based cruise ship for the third time this week, as the number of coronavirus cases in Florida hit its highest level since the start of the pandemic.
An undisclosed number of passengers and crew aboard the Carnival Freedom cruise caught the virus so the ship was denied entry to Bonaire and Aruba, Carnival said in a statement.
The ship has 2,497 passengers and 1,112 crew members and was scheduled to return to Miami on Sunday following an eightday cruise.
Passengers were required to be vaccinated and were tested before leaving last Saturday, according to Carnival.It was the third outbreak this week affecting cruise ships operated by Carnival and Royal Caribbean departing Miami and Fort Lauderdale.
Meanwhile, Florida set a new single-day record with 31,758 COVID-19 cases on Friday.The new mark was driven by the spread of the omicron variant.