death toll - The African Mirror

Mar

2023

Anger, sorrow in Greece as train crash death toll rises

LEFTERIS PAPADIMAS and ALEXANDROS AVRAMIDIS ANGER and sorrow grew in Greece over a devastating train crash that killed dozens of passengers along with crew members near the central city of Larissa in the country's worst rail disaster. Carriages were thrown off the tracks, crushed and engulfed in flames when a high-speed passenger train with more than 350 people on board collided head-on with a freight train on Tuesday. They were on the same track. As more bodies were recovered on Thursday, the number of dead rose to 57, among them university students returning home after a long holiday weekend. Scores were injured.…

Feb

2023

By The African Mirror

Turkey steps up rebuilding plans as quake toll nears 50,000

WORLD

HENRIETTE CHACAR and TIMOUR AZHARI TURKEY has stepped up plans to house victims of the devastating earthquake which struck its border region with Syria, the interior minister said, as the combined death toll in the two countries crept towards 50,000. Suleyman Soylu said 313,000 tents had been erected, with 100,000 container homes to be installed in the disaster zone which stretches for hundreds of kilometres inland from the Turkish and Syrian Mediterranean coast. The number of people killed in Turkey has risen to 43,556, Soylu said, while in Syria the death toll was close to 6,000. The United Nations said…

Feb

2023

By The African Mirror

Death toll from cyclone Freddy in Madagascar rises to 4 – govt

NEWS

THE death toll in Madagascar from tropical cyclone Freddy has risen to four, the government said, as the storm moved west across the island nation toward mainland Africa. Freddy made landfall in southeastern Madagascar late on Tuesday with gusts of up to 180 km per hour (110 miles per hour), flooding the area and ripping roofs off houses. Its arrival came nearly a month after storm Cheneso killed 33 people and forced thousands from their homes in Madagascar. In a statement, the government's National Office of Risks and Disasters revised the death toll up to four from one earlier. The storm has…

Feb

2023

By The African Mirror

Earthquake death toll tops 33,000, Turkey starts legal action

WORLD

ALI KUCUKGOCMEN and HENRIETTE CHACAR RESCUERS pulled more survivors from the rubble, nearly a week after one of the worst earthquakes to hit Turkey and Syria, as Turkish authorities sought to maintain order across the disaster zone and began legal action over building collapses. With chances of finding more survivors growing more remote, the toll in both countries from Monday's earthquake and major aftershocks rose above 33,000 and looked set to keep growing. It was the deadliest quake in Turkey since 1939. Displaced residents in the Turkish city of Kahramanmaras, near the epicentre, said they had set up tents as…

Feb

2023

By UMIT BEKTAS, MEHMET CALISKAN and KHALIL ASHAWI

Hope for more survivors fades as Turkey-Syria earthquake toll passes 20,000

WORLD

COLD, hunger and despair gripped hundreds of thousands of people left homeless after the earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria three days ago as the death toll passed 20,000. The rescue of a 2-year-old boy after 79 hours trapped in the rubble of a collapsed building in Hatay, Turkey, and several other people raised spirits among weary search crews. But hopes were fading that many more would be found alive in the ruins of towns and cities. The death toll across both countries has now surpassed the more than 17,000 killed in 1999 when a similarly powerful quake hit northwest…

Jan

2023

By The African Mirror

Death toll rises to 14 in Congo church attack claimed by Islamic State

NEWS

THE death toll from a church bombing in the east Democratic Republic of Congo has risen to 14, an army spokesman said. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack on a Sunday service at a Protestant church in the eastern city of Kasindi, near the border with Uganda. Local army spokesman Anthony Mwalushayi told Reuters the number of casualties had increased to 14 deaths and 63 wounded, from five and 15, respectively, announced on Sunday. The army blamed the attack on the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan militant group that pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in 2019. The militant group could not…

Nov

2022

By The African Mirror

Uganda: Ebola outbreak death toll rises to 48

NEWS

THE death toll from an Ebola outbreak in Uganda has risen to 48, with 131 confirmed cases, a health official involved in managing the outbreak said. Last week Uganda's health minister put the death toll at 30, with 109 confirmed cases. "Confirmed cases by today 131 and 48 deaths," Henry Kyobe Bosa, Ebola incident commander at Uganda's health ministry, told a briefing organised by the World Health Organization's Africa office. "On the spread and when we are likely to have the outbreak ending I see no experts on this panel can actually predict when it will end," he said, adding authorities…

Nov

2022

By The African Mirror

Malawi cholera death toll rises to 180

NEWS

THE death toll from a cholera outbreak in Malawi accelerated to 180 from 110 in October, the minister of health said, raising the likelihood that the situation could worsen. The first case of the debilitating infection, which spreads mainly through contaminated food and water, was reported in March in the southern district of Machinga. The case fatality rate has risen to 3% from 2.8% recorded at the start of October, Malawi's health minister Khumbize Chiponda said in a statement, adding that the total number of infections since the start of the outbreak stood at 5,939. Thomson Reuters Foundation

Jul

2022

By The African Mirror

Tensions spread in Sudan as tribal clashes rage on

NEWS

THE death toll from tribal clashes triggered by land disputes in southeastern Sudan's Blue Nile State has risen to at least 64, medical sources said on Monday, with the long-festering tensions spreading into some other states. A curfew was imposed in two major towns of Blue Nile State and security forces were deployed following fighting between the Hausa and Funj tribes that began last week. Medical sources in the state capital Damazine said that at least 64 people had been killed and hundreds injured, amid a severe shortage in emergency medical supplies. In the city of Roseires, also in Blue…

Jul

2022

By The African Mirror

Ukraine apartment block toll rises as Zelenskiy laments Russian firepower advantage

WORLD

ANNA VOITENKO and TOM BALMFORTH RESCUE workers pulled some survivors from an apartment block destroyed by a Russian missile strike that killed 30 people in eastern Ukraine, while Russian shelling killed at least three in the second-largest city of Kharkiv. The civilian deaths hammered home the human cost of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, now in its fifth month, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy lamented Russia's "big advantage" in artillery despite Western offers of help. In the city of Chasiv Yar, rescuers made voice contact with two people in the wreckage of the five-storey apartment building demolished by a rocket on…