Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on November 16, 2014

Remains of a South African being carried to one of the trucks | credits: Stanley Ogidi

The South African government on Saturday began the repatriation of the bodies of its citizens killed in the Synagogue Church of All Nations, Lagos building collapse.

Eighty-one South Africans were confirmed killed in a guest house owned by the church of popular televangelist, Temitope Joshua, on September 12.

The bodies were removed from Isolo General Hospital and Mainland Hospital, Yaba in Lagos State. The airlifting of the remains was scheduled for Saturday.

But, according to the Lagos State Chief Forensic Pathologist, Prof. John Obafunwa, the South African and Nigerian teams were only able to identify 66 bodies.

Weve so far identified 40 bodies at the Yaba Mainland Hospital mortuary and another 26 bodies were identified at the Isolo General Hospital, Obafunwa said.

The South African team, including military personnel, forensic experts and pathologists were said to have arrived in Nigeria around midnight and headed for the two general hospitals to identify and repatriate the bodies of their compatriots.

Speaking further, the Lagos pathologist stated, We have been busy since yesterday (Friday) in preparation for today (Saturday). We have been here for 24 hours, getting the bodies ready; the bodies tagged, in preparation for today. We have the bodies that were located essentially in two mortuaries; the few bodies in Lagos State University Teaching Hospitals mortuary were moved to Yaba Mainland Hospital. And we have some bodies at the Isolo General Hospital.

We knew the South African team would arrive today. They came in around midnight. They came with their military, forensic and autopsy personnel. Theres been cooperation between us and the South African team. They arrived here at 4am. We started by identifying the bodies and setting up tents and other things. By 6am we started picking each body, decontaminating them further and bagging them all these were done by the South African team.

Images at the site

Read more:

Synagogue: South Africa receives corpsesshuns Nigerian facilities

Category: Synagogue
Tags: