5 Off-duty Soldiers Die as Boat Capsizes in Japan
December 12, 2009 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
TOKYO : Five off-duty soldiers were killed and another was missing on Saturday after their boat capsized off the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, officials said.
The Self-Defense Forces members were night fishing on an offshore breakwater 500 metres (1,650 feet) from Tomakomai port, southern Hokkaido, late on Friday, a local coastguard official said.
As the weather turned bad, they tried to leave the breakwater on a boat but it suddenly turned over, throwing them into the sea, the official said.
Another soldier who was with the six managed get back to the breakwater by himself, while rescue operators found five people floating near the breakwater, who were later confirmed dead.
“We will soon send a patrol boat out there to find the remaining one,” the official said.
The meteorological observatory issued a warning of strong winds and high waves in the region late on Friday.
5 Off-duty Soldiers Die as Boat Capsizes in Japan was first posted on December 12, 2009 at 3:33 pm.
Free Sri Lanka Child Soldiers: UN Envoy
December 12, 2009 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
Colombo: Free Sri Lanka Child Soldiers: UN Envoy, A top United Nations envoy asked Sri Lanka today to release detained Tamil Tiger child soldiers and asked the authorities to re-unite them with their families.
Retired Major General Patrick Cammaert, the UN special envoy on children and armed conflict, said children who had been conscripted by the Tiger rebels should be allowed to return to their families.
“Hundreds of children are still missing or separated from their parents. They must be reunited as soon as possible,” the Dutch UN official told reporters.
Cammaert met nearly 300 children who were forcibly recruited by the defeated Tamil Tiger rebels during his visit, UN spokesman Gordon Weiss said.
“The best practice in other parts of the world show that children recover better from traumatic experiences when living with their loved ones,” Cammaert said at the end of a five-day visit to the island.
Government forces crushed the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May and detained thousands, including child soldiers, who are still held in camps which are off limits for international aid agencies.
He said children in camps for internally displaced people (IDPs) were also at risk.
The government allowed tens of thousands of civilians held in the IDP camps to go in and out freely from December 1, but aid agencies and reporters are still barred from entering them and speaking with inmates.
