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Friday, July 18, 2008
Specialist in victim identification expected Friday
CEBU CITY -- AN expert in identifying disaster victims is expected to arrive in Cebu Friday.
Slatan Bajunovic, a disaster victim identification (DVI) specialist from the International Commission of Missing Persons (ICMP) headquarters in Sarajevo, Bosnia, is expected to stay in the country throughout the identification process.
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"Slatan Bajunovic will oversee the entire DVI process," said Superintendent Anthony Obenza, chief of the Philippine Center on Transnational Crime Visayas Field Office (PCTC-VFO).
Preparation
Preparations for the arrival of the mobile morgue from Norway continued Thursday.
The DVI team measured Thursday the Cebu International Port (CIP) grounds in preparation for the arrival of the facility.
The mobile morgue was expected Thursday but Obenza said it was still in transit and would arrive either Friday or Saturday. As of Thursday, it was still in Thailand.
Obenza told Sun.Star Cebu that Kiki Wong, another Interpol official, arrived from Hong Kong to work with the DVI team at the Information Management Center.
Along with Wong was a private contractor of Normeca, a Norwegian company that specializes in mobile laboratories, who will work on the installation of the mobile morgue.
With 500 bodies expected to arrive in Cebu once the MV Princess of the Stars is refloated, DVI teams from all over the world will be coming to Cebu to assist in the identification of bodies.
DVI experts from Canada, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia have already agreed to help.
On Friday, 46 more bodies were expected to arrive in Cebu.
Instead of leaving for Cebu Thursday, the vessels carrying the bodies remained docked in the islands near Romblon, awaiting more corpses.
"Still waiting for more bodies to be loaded," according to a text message sent to Sun.Star Cebu by Sulpicio Lines Inc. assistant vice president Ryan Bernard Go.
Search
Go said the MV Cebu Princess was already carrying 37 bodies from the island of San Pascual and there were plans to send it to Claveria to try to retrieve more bodies.
"MV Panama 17 at San Fernando, Sibuyan Island, continuing the search," Go said in his text updates.
Go said retrieval operations slowed down because of Typhoon Helen. (EPB of Sun.Star Cebu)
For more Philippine news, visit Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro. (July 18, 2008 issue)
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