India
buries, cremates victims of air disaster
Grieving
relatives attempt to identify others
November 14, 1996..........................Web posted at: 2:30 p.m. EST (1930 GMT)
CHARKHI DADRI, India (CNN) -- The stench
of more than 200 burned and rotting bodies and the wails
of distraught relatives greeted Muslim and Hindu clergy
called to a rural hospital Thursday to help bury or
cremate the victims of history's third-deadliest airline
disaster.
 Officials said 349 people were killed in
Tuesday's accident involving a Saudi jetliner departing
New Delhi and an arriving Kazakh cargo plane. Rescue
teams were still searching for the remaining victims
among the wreckage, spread over a large area 50 miles (80
km) west of New Delhi.
Mass graves, missing bodies
Four-month-old Adila Fatima was laid to rest in a
tiny plot alongside two 40-foot (13-meter) trenches. A
mechanical digger made the excavation for mass graves for
up to 100 people in a roadside Muslim graveyard. "We
haven't found the bodies of her parents," said
Adila's uncle, Abdul Nadeem.
"We don't have proper refrigeration or even a
regular morgue here," said K.B. Kanwal, director of
health services for the region.
Satpal Malhota, an official at the Indian consulate in
San Francisco, walked through the morgue twice Thursday
morning but could not identify the body of his
21-year-old daughter Manisha, a flight attendant aboard
the Saudi airliner."I came here looking for my
daughter. I'm going back empty-handed," a weeping
Malhota said.
"We have placed the bodies on blocks of ice, and we
would like these bodies to be cremated or taken away
today."
Too badly burned to be
identified
Ninety-four bodies that officials determined were too
badly burned to be identified were buried or cremated in
Muslim, Hindu and Christian ceremonies on Thursday.
Scores of remains have not been identified following the
collision between the Saudi Boeing 747 with 312 people on
board and a Kazakh Ilyushin IL-76 freighter carrying 37.
Authorities said 32 bodies were still somewhere among the
wreckage of the Saudi jumbo jet spread across 4 square
kilometers (1.5 square miles). Workers used three cranes
to lift large chunks in hope of finding them.
Nationalities of victims
All 37 victims on the chartered KazAir plane, which
was taking businessmen to New Delhi, have been
identified. A Saudi newspaper said the victims on the
Saudi airliner included 215 Indians, 13 Saudis, and three
Pakistanis.
Nepal said there were 53 Nepalis on board. There were
three Americans and one Briton aboard, officials said.
One of the Saudi crew members was a dual U.S.-Saudi
citizen, U.S. embassy officials said Thursday. |
