Foreign
Lone Air India Survivor Carries Brother’s Coffin
Air India crash survivor attends funeral of brother who died in crash
The British man who was the sole survivor of last week’s Air India plane crash has helped lay his brother to rest at a funeral in western India.
Vishwashkumar Ramesh’s brother Ajay was also on the ill-fated flight but did not survive the tragedy.
A visibly upset Ramesh was one of the pall bearers who carried his brother’s coffin to the crematorium in the town of Diu, his arm and face still covered in white bandages. He’s spent most of the past five days in hospital.
The London-bound Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner crashed seconds after taking off on Thursday from the western Indian city of Ahmedabad. At least 270 people were killed, most of them passengers.
Mr Ramesh’s mother walked with the coffin in a blue sari along with other mourners, as he held it on his right shoulder.
Several people from the town – which lost 14 other people to the crash – came out for the funeral even as the rain lashed the procession.
No one is clear how Mr Ramesh managed to survive. He even tried to go back to the blazing plane to search for his brother, one of the first responders at the scene told the BBC.
In a new video that emerged earlier this week, ambulance driver Satinder Singh Sandhu is the man seen guiding Mr Ramesh to safety as he walks out of the crash site with flames and thick smoke billowing into the air behind him.
Mr Sandhu, a supervisor with the emergency ambulance services in Ahmedabad, says he had no idea who he was helping, or that Mr Ramesh had escaped from the plane. He only found out later that day on the news that the man was the sole survivor of the crash.
Vishwashkumar Ramesh, 40, was in seat 11A on the flight. His brother is reported to have been sitting a few seats away.
All other passengers and crew were killed and nearly 30 people also died on the ground after the plane hurtled down and crashed into a doctor’s hostel.
But Mr Ramesh miraculously survived, managing to get out of the wreckage through an opening in the fuselage.
The new video shows Mr Sandhu, who’s wearing a blue turban, walk up to Mr Ramesh and guide him to safety.
Mr Sandhu said he was having lunch with his colleagues when he first noticed a “massive fire with thick smoke rising into the sky”.
“At first, we thought it might be a car accident or a gas cylinder blast. Soon, we learned it was a plane crash. I immediately instructed my team to bring an ambulance, and rushed to the site.”
Speaking to BBC Gujarati, Mr Sandhu said that he was just trying to do his job. In his decades-long career, he said he had encountered many challenging situations.
But what surprised him that day was how Mr Ramesh, after being rescued, kept trying to go back to the site of the crash.
“He had no idea what he was doing. He kept going in and out of the complex. We told him to stop, and dragged him away to an ambulance so that he could receive medical care,” Mr Sandhu said.
“That’s when he said to me that his relative was trapped inside and he wanted to go save him. We did not speak a word after that.”
Mr Ramesh later told India’s DD News that he was trying to go look for Ajay.
Pavan Jaishwal Mr Sandhu, seen in yellow turban, guided the sole survivor of the crash to safety. Pavan Jaishwal
Satinder Singh Sandhu said he only realised who Mr Ramesh was when he saw the news later
At the scene, Mr Sandhu spotted a security guard who seemed to have been injured in the impact. His clothes were partially burnt and Mr Sandhu first helped him.
“I also saw a woman. She was screaming in horror. Her son who ran a tea stall had been killed in the crash.”
Moments later he saw Mr Ramesh emerge from the crash site in a white shirt.
He had injuries on his face and burns on his arms and looked visibly upset, Mr Sandhu said.
“At that point, we had no idea who the injured man was. I thought he was one of the doctors who lived in the college. Later, when we saw the news, we realised he was the lone survivor of the crash.”
Chirag, a member of Mr Sandhu’s ambulance team, told PTI news agency that Mr Ramesh was telling someone on a video call that his relatives were at the crash site.
The first responders treated him for his injuries and rushed him to the trauma centre of a hospital nearby.
In his interview with DD News, Mr Ramesh had said he could not believe that he came out of the wreckage alive.
“For a moment, I felt like I was going to die too, but when I opened my eyes and looked around, I realised I was alive.
“I still can’t believe how I survived. I walked out of the rubble.”
The cause of the crash is not yet known. Officials are trying to decode the cockpit voice and flight data recorders – collectively known as the black box – recovered from the wreckage to piece together what happened.
Bbc.com
The Leader of INRI Evangelical Spiritual Church, Primate Elijah Ayodele, has warned that the President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, may be stoned.
In a statement signed by his media aide, Osho Oluwatosin, Primate Ayodele noted that the president will face attacks in an Arab country and that some nations will gang up to cause chaos in America.
“Donald Trump may be attacked and stoned in an Arab country; he needs to be very careful, and I also see some nations coming together to cause chaos in the USA The president must be watchful about this.”
He made it known that the policies of the president will destroy America and that if he continues, things will not go well in the USA.
“The USA will not be the same again because of Trump’s policies. His administration needs to be careful to avoid things going otherwise in the country.
“Trump needs to do better to make the world a better place; otherwise, America will pay for the damages even after his administration”
Primate Ayodele urged Trump to do better before it’s too late, as he foresees some problems befalling the nation very soon
“Trump needs to adjust so many things before it’s too late. A problem is coming, and something will happen which won’t favour the USA. Trump needs to reorganise and look into many things to avoid putting America into jeopardy; if not, they will regret voting for him.”
South Sudan has started holding a trial for First Vice President Riek Machar, who has been sacked by his decades-long rival, President Salva Kiir, and charged with murder, treason and crimes against humanity in relation to rebellion and an attack by a militia linked with ethnic tensions.
Machar and seven others who have been charged alongside him, including Petroleum Minister Puot Kang Chol, were seen sitting inside a barred cage in the court on Monday during a live broadcast on national television.
Machar has been held in house arrest at his residence in the capital, Juba, for months following investigations by the government of his allies.
Earlier this month, a decree read on state radio said Kiir suspended the first vice president due to charges stemming from his alleged involvement in attacks by the White Army against federal forces in March.
The White Army, a loose band of armed youths, attacked a military base in Nasir, northeastern South Sudan, and killed more than 250 soldiers on Machar’s orders, according to the government.
Edmund Yakani, executive director of South Sudan activist group Community Empowerment for Progress Organization, told local media that the trial must be transparent and fair to build up trust in the judicial system.
He urged both leaders and their parties to “adhere to the principle of resolving political misunderstanding through dialogue” rather than violence, which would benefit no one.
Machar’s party, Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army-in Opposition (SPLM/IO), has called the charges “fabricated” and said its members were arrested illegally. Machar’s lawyer on Monday said “an incompetent court” that lacks jurisdiction is judging him.
Fears of a return to ruinous civil war
After the vice president’s arrest, the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) called on all parties to exercise restraint and warned that they risked losing the “hard-won gains of the past seven years” and returning to a state of civil war.
In 2013, two years after the country gained independence from Sudan following decades of war, oil-producing South Sudan descended into a civil war.
The devastating conflict, which scarred the country and left some 400,000 people killed, pitted Kiir and his allies from the ethnic Dinka group against Machar, who is from the Nuer, the second-largest ethnic group in South Sudan.
More than four million people, or about one-third of the population, were displaced from their homes before a 2018 peace deal saw the pair form a “national unity” government.
But they never fully saw eye-to-eye, leaving the country in a state of limbo.
Both leaders held on to their armed factions that were never fully integrated and unified despite agreements, while reforms were delayed, and presidential elections were repeatedly postponed.
Armed clashes have erupted in several parts of the country over the past months, with both sides accusing each other of breaking ceasefire agreements.
Authorities in South Sudan are, in the meantime, plundering billions of dollars in public funds as the impoverished country also deals with a deepening food crisis, according to the UN.
“The country has been captured by a predatory elite that has institutionalised the systematic looting of the nation’s wealth for private gain,” the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan said last week.
South Sudan’s First Vice President Machar faces charges of treason and other serious crimes, local justice authorities said, as fears grow that the east African country could edge toward a return to civil war.
The United Nations body for human rights in South Sudan has called the government’s charges of treason against opposition leader Riek Machar “reckless.”
South Sudan’s First Vice President Machar faces charges of treason and other serious crimes, local justice authorities said Thursday, as fears grow that the east African country could edge toward a return to civil war.
Machar has been under house arrest since March after the transitional government he is a part of accused him of subversive activities against President Salva Kiir, who said Thursday that he was suspending Machar as his deputy because of the criminal allegations.
Pro-government troops have been fighting militias and other armed groups that they say are loyal to Machar, who has served as his country’s No. 2 under the terms of a delicate peace deal signed in 2018.
That agreement has not been fully implemented, with presidential elections repeatedly postponed.
In addition to treason, Machar and seven others face charges of murder, conspiracy, terrorism, destruction of public property and military assets and crimes against humanity.
The charges stem from a violent incident in March when a militia known as the White Army overran a garrison of government troops, killing its commanding officer and others. The justice ministry said in a statement Thursday that the attack in Nasir, Upper Nile state was influenced by Machar and others via ”coordinated military and political structures.”
Bringing criminal charges against Machar is likely to further destabilize South Sudan, whose government faces pressure from regional leaders to reach a political agreement that prevents a return to full-blown war.
It was not immediately clear when Machar would be presented in a courtroom. His precise whereabouts in South Sudan are unknown, and his political supporters have long called for his freedom.
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Tell Trump This: Primate Ayodele Sends Warning To Donald Trump In New Prophecy
