Category Archives: Mass Disaster

The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), whose DNA Laboratory was moved from BH to The Hague will start with profiling of the cases from the Western Balkans already in the upcoming month, when the new laboratory system is fully functional, as confirmed by Sasa Kulukcija, the spokesperson of ICMP.
To recall, the new laboratory was moved to The Hague at the end of December last year.

Nazareth, Israel – Thousands of Israeli families who have been searching in vain for answers since their babies mysteriously disappeared in the early 1950s – shortly after Israel’s creation – have been thrown a lifeline.

MARAWI CITY – Philippine National Police Director General Ronald Dela Rosa said the police’s Scene of Crime Office (SOCO) has started collecting samples from individuals who have reported about missing relatives.
Dela Rosa said the DNA sampling activity would help the police identify cadavers, which had been been retrieved and remained unidentified, and those that would be retrieved in the coming days.
The military has estimated 400 bodies strewn in various parts of the city. Some of them were civilians while most belonged to Maute gunmen and their allies.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Martin Ogando and his 91-year-old grandmother, Delia Giovanola, flip through a stack of photos until they reach an image of a man Ogando never saw in life: his father.
The two share similar skin tone and blue eyes — products of the same genetics that finally allowed Ogando to discover his birth identity through DNA tests in November 2015.
The tests showed that he’s the biological son of Jorge Ogando and Stella Maris Montesano, a child born in captivity in a clandestine detention center and taken away from parents who were forcibly disappeared in 1976 during Argentina’s dictatorship.

To lower the number still missing from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, the National Police Agency will begin utilizing a nationwide database on unidentified bodies as early as July.
The NPA will compare data on missing people in the three prefectures of Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima, which were hit hard by the powerful tsunami, with its database.

Work will start later this month on identifying the bodies of unknown Argentine soldiers in the Falklands.
The International Committee of the Red Cross will take DNA samples from 123 graves in Darwin cemetery, which will be compared with those of relatives.

The remains of U.S. Navy Musician 1st Class Elliott Deen Larsen, of Monroe, continue their journey home after arriving from Hawaii at the Salt Lake City International Airport in Salt Lake City on Thursday, May 25, 2017. Larsen died in the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, but it wasn’t until recently that his remains were identified through DNA testing.

An Emmons, Minn., sailor killed during the attack on Pearl Harbor is finally on his way home.
Navy Fireman 3rd Class Glaydon I.C. Iverson, 24, died on Dec. 7, 1941, aboard the USS Oklahoma at Pearl Harbor. His remains had been unidentified and buried in a plot at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific for more than 74 years.

ATHENS — The Greek police’s criminal investigation department’s workload has surged since last October, as its forensics team scrambles to identify some of the hundreds of victims who have drowned making the short but dangerous journey from the shores of Turkey to outlying Greek islands.
The director of Greece’s forensic division, Penelope Miniati, told Reuters there are 85 DNA samples still to be processed and identified since October compared to normally dealing with just a “handful” every month.