The Jim Bakker Show

Palestinian killed in anti-U.S. protests after U.N. vote on Jerusalem

A Palestinian demonstrator uses a slingshot to hurl stones towards Israeli troops during clashes at a protest as Palestinians call for a "Day of Rage" in response to U.S. President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, in the West Bank city of Hebron December 22, 2017.

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) – Palestinians launched more anti-U.S. protests on Friday, and at least one demonstrator was killed in the Gaza Strip, a health official said, after the U.N. General Assembly rejected Washington’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Smoke billowed from burning tires at a demonstration in Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank, two days before Christmas celebrations in the biblical town.

Israeli gunfire killed a 24-year-old Palestinian and wounded 10 other protesters during a stone-throwing demonstration in the southern Gaza Strip, a spokesman for the Palestinian Health Ministry there said. The Israeli military said it was checking the report.

One of the wounded, part of a crowd that approached the border fence chanting that U.S. President Donald Trump was a “fool” and a “coward”, was dressed as Santa Claus, witnesses said.

Protests erupted in all of the West Bank’s seven cities and in East Jerusalem. Health officials said at least five Palestinians were wounded by rubber bullets fired by Israeli security forces, who also used tear gas.

Defying the United States on Thursday, the U.N. General Assembly approved a resolution calling for the United States to drop its Dec. 6 recognition of Jerusalem, a city revered by Jews, Muslims and Christians, as Israel’s capital.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in a Christmas message, condemned Trump’s reversal of a decades-old U.S. policy on Jerusalem “an insult to millions of people worldwide, and also to the city of Bethlehem”.

“HOUSE OF LIES”

Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital. Palestinians want the capital of an independent Palestinian state to be in the city’s eastern sector, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East War and annexed in a move never recognized internationally.

Most countries regard the status of Jerusalem as a matter to be settled in an eventual Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, although that process is now stalled.

Nine countries voted against the U.N. resolution and 35 abstained. Twenty-one countries did not cast a vote.

Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Gaza’s dominant Hamas Islamists, called the U.N. vote a defeat for Trump, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected it as “preposterous” and branded the U.N. a “house of lies”.

But Michael Oren, Israel’s deputy minister for diplomacy, seemed to play down the support for the resolution shown by many countries Israel considers friends.

“We have an interest in tightening our bilateral relations with a long list of countries in the world, and expect and hope that one day, they will vote with us, or for us in the United Nations,” Oren said on Tel Aviv radio station 102 FM.

“But I am not prepared to suspend all cooperation with important countries, such as India,” he said. Netanyahu, who hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in July, is due to visit New Delhi next month.

Palestinians have protested daily since Trump’s Jerusalem announcement, throwing stones at Israeli security forces. Gaza militants have also launched sporadic rocket fire.

Friday’s death in Gaza raised to nine the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli gunfire during the demonstrations, Palestinian health officials said, and dozens have been wounded. Two militants were killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza after a rocket attack. There have been no Israeli fatalities or significant injuries.

“EXCESSIVE FORCE”

Amnesty International on Friday called on Israeli authorities to stop using “excessive force”.

“The fact that live ammunition has been used during protests in Gaza and the West Bank is particularly shocking,” it said.

In the run-up to the U.N. vote, Trump threatened to cut off financial aid to countries that supported the resolution. His warning appeared to have some impact, with more countries abstaining and rejecting the document than usually associated with Palestinian-related resolutions.

But most of the European Union, Israel’s biggest trading partner, and countries such as Greece, Cyprus and India, with which Netanyahu has pursued closer relations and economic ties, backed the resolution.

“I prefer we have tight bilateral relations over a situation in which we don’t have close bilateral relations, and they vote in our favor in the United Nations,” Oren said, describing India’s vote as “certainly disappointing”.

Asked if Israel wanted the United States to cut aid to countries that endorsed the resolution, Oren said: “I prefer … that if there’s room for revenge, it be directed towards the United Nations and not the U.N.’s members.”

He said he supported cutting U.S. contributions to the U.N. and perhaps relocating its New York headquarters, noting it occupies “some of the most valuable real estate in New York”.

(Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah and Michelle Nichols at the U.N.; Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Andrew Roche)

U.S. investigators seek answers from train crew in Washington derailment

A damaged Amtrak passenger train car is lifted from the tracks at the site of the derailment of Amtrak train 501 in Dupont, Washington, U.S., December 19, 2017.

By Tom James

DUPONT, Wash. (Reuters) – U.S. safety inspectors probing the deadly wreck of a passenger train that careened off a bridge onto a highway in Washington state are eager to question the engineer and a conductor-in-training who were in the cab of the locomotive, officials said on Tuesday.

National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) officials hoped interviews with all crew members would shed light on why Train 501 on Amtrak’s Cascades line was going more than twice the speed limit around a curved stretch of track when it derailed on Monday.

The accident occurred during the train’s inaugural run on a new, slightly quicker route between Olympia and Tacoma, with 86 people aboard, 80 of them passengers, Amtrak said.

NTSB officials said they planned to interview all the crew members in the next two days, once they sufficiently recover from injuries suffered in the wreck, including the conductor-in-training who was with the engineer at the time.

Safety board member T. Bella Dinh-Zarr told reporters that NTSB investigators would seek to determine, among other factors routinely examined, whether the engineer was distracted while driving the ill-fated train.

“Distraction is one of our most-wanted-list priorities at the NTSB,” she said.

She also said investigators had determined that the train’s emergency brakes were automatically activated while the derailment was occurring, rather than engaged manually by the engineer.

In addition, she confirmed that a safety system known as positive train control (PTC), which automatically slows trains if they go too fast, was not installed on the rail line. She said Congress had extended a mandatory deadline for having the PTC system installed on all passenger railways to 2018.

None of the crew has been identified. All were hospitalized, Dinh-Zarr said.

Three people aboard the train were killed when all 12 carriages and one of the train’s two locomotives tumbled off the rails onto Interstate 5 near the town of DuPont, about 50 miles south of Seattle, officials said. Another 100 people were taken to hospitals, 10 with serious injuries.

Some motorists were among the injured, though nobody on the highway died.

Recorded data recovered from the rear locomotive showed the train was going 80 miles (129 km) per hour on a bend in the track where the speed limit was 30 mph (48 kph), NTSB officials said on Monday night. The board said it was investigating whether other circumstances besides speed were involved, such as track conditions, signals, mechanical issues and human factors.

Speaking at an afternoon news conference on Tuesday, Dinh-Zarr said that a conductor “who was getting experience and familiarizing himself with the territory” was present in the locomotive cab with the engineer. NTSB spokesman Peter Knudson described that second Amtrak employee as a “conductor-in-training.”

Dinh-Zarr said it was not unusual for conductors who are learning a new train route to ride in the cab with the engineer. She said another conductor was posted in the passenger section of the train at the time.

The derailment placed Amtrak, the country’s main passenger rail service, under renewed scrutiny following a series of fatal incidents.

Rescue personnel and equipment are seen at the scene where an Amtrak passenger train derailed on a bridge over interstate highway I-5 in DuPont, Washington, U.S., December 18, 2017.

FILE PHOTO: Rescue personnel and equipment are seen at the scene where an Amtrak passenger train derailed on a bridge over interstate highway I-5 in DuPont, Washington, U.S., December 18, 2017. REUTERS/Steve Dipaola/File Photo

SEEKING TO REOPEN HIGHWAY

Meanwhile, workers lifted mangled train cars onto flatbed trucks from the wreckage site, using two towering cranes in wet, windy weather as they sought to reopen the southbound lanes of Interstate 5, a major West Coast highway stretching from the Canadian border to Mexico.

They expected to remove five of the cars and the locomotive by Tuesday afternoon and take them to a nearby U.S. military base for further examination, officials said.

The locomotive alone weighs more than 270,000 pounds (120 tonnes) and will require an extra-large truck to move, Dan Hall, the regional commander for the Washington State Patrol, said at a news conference.

The southbound stretch of Interstate 5 will remain closed for several days, the Washington State Department of Transportation said.

At least two of the three people who died in the derailment were transit enthusiasts who wanted to see the maiden run of a new route for the train line, said Abe Zumwalt, director of policy research for the Rail Passengers Association.

Jim Hamre and Zack Willhoite were members of the association, the Washington, D.C.-based organization said in a statement identifying the two men as victims of the wreck. Willhoite worked for a local transportation agency, Pierce Transit, as a customer service support specialist.

“They were best friends and they took all kinds of trips together, and given that yesterday was an inaugural run on a service that both had advocated for tirelessly, it made sense that they were on board,” Zumwalt said in a phone interview.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York and Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles. Writing by Jonathan Allen and Steve Gorman; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Cynthia Osterman)

Fierce California winds expected as crews fight to tame wildfire

A home's remains are seen, next to a burnt out truck, after they were destroyed, during a wind-driven wildfire in Ventura.

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Crews battling a devastating California wildfire that now ranks as the state’s second-largest on record may face another round of fierce winds on Wednesday after they made progress corralling the flames.

Wind gusts were expected to whip back up to 50 mph (80 kph) on Wednesday evening and into Thursday morning as the so-called Thomas fire burned in the coastal mountains, foothills and canyons of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties northwest of Los Angeles, the National Weather Service said in an advisory.

A firefighter is working on extinguishing the Lilac Fire, a fast moving wildfire in Bonsall.
REUTERS/Mike Blake

On Tuesday, officials scaled back evacuation orders, cut firefighting personnel to 6,800 from about 8,500 and reported improved air quality.

Higher humidity combined with diminished winds and temperatures to ease the firefighters’ job since Sunday. But the region remains “critically dry,” a group of agencies said in a statement.

More than 1,000 homes and other buildings have gone up in flames and about 18,000 structures remained listed as threatened from a late-season firestorm that has kept crews on the defensive for the better part of two weeks.

One firefighter died last Thursday near the town of Fillmore in Ventura County.

Still, fire managers were “cautiously optimistic” that they have gained sufficient ground this week to protect populated areas against the return of the high winds forecast.

By Tuesday night, firefighters had carved containment lines around 55 percent of the blaze’s perimeter – up from 50 percent earlier in the day. But the fire has still spread by several hundred acres a day since the weekend.

In total the fire has scorched 272,000 acres (110,074 hectares) of drought-parched chaparral and brush since igniting on Dec. 4, covering an area equivalent to nearly a third of Rhode Island.

The latest tally makes the Thomas blaze second only in scale in California to the 2003 Cedar fire in San Diego County, which consumed a record 273,246 acres and killed 15 people.

The Thomas fire was initially stoked by hot, dry Santa Ana winds blowing with rare hurricane force from the eastern desert, spreading flames across miles of rugged coastal terrain faster than firefighters could keep up.

(Additional reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

At least 65 media workers killed doing their jobs in 2017: Reporters Without Borders

BERLIN (Reuters) – At least 65 media workers around the world have been killed doing their jobs this year, media freedom organization Reporters Without Borders said on Tuesday.

Among the dead were 50 professional journalists, seven citizen journalists and eight other media workers. The five most dangerous countries were Syria, Mexico, Afghanistan, Iraq and the Philippines.

Of those killed, 35 died in regions where armed conflict is ongoing while 30 were killed outside of such areas.

Thirty-nine of those killed were targeted for their journalistic work such as reporting on political corruption or organized crime while the other 26 were killed while working due to shelling and bomb attacks, for example.

“It’s alarming that so many journalists were murdered outside of war zones,” said Katja Gloger, a board member of Reporters Without Borders.

“In far too many countries perpetrators can assume they’ll get off scot-free if they’re violent towards media professionals,” she added.

The organization said more than 300 media workers were currently in prison, with around half of those in five countries, namely Turkey, China, Syria, Iran and Vietnam.

(Reporting by Markus Wacket; Writing by Michelle Martin; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

Lighter winds early this week may help battle against California wildfire

Firefighters keep watch on the Thomas wildfire in the hills and canyons outside Montecito, California, U.S., December 16, 2017.

By Chris Kenning

(Reuters) – Lighter winds expected in California early this week should help firefighters in their battle against one of the largest and most destructive wildfires in the state’s history, the National Weather Service has said.

By late on Sunday, more than 8,500 firefighters had contained about 45 percent of the fire in Southern California. Dubbed the Thomas fire, it began Dec. 4 and has scorched 270,000 acres (109,000 hectares) along the scenic Pacific Coast north of Los Angeles.

Its size is approaching that of the 2003 Cedar blaze in San Diego County, the largest wildfire in state history, which consumed 273,246 acres and caused 15 deaths.

While wind and low humidity will still create dangerous fire conditions, “improving weather conditions should allow firefighters to make progress on the fire” on Monday and Tuesday, the National Weather Service said on Twitter.

Officials said calmer winds also helped make Sunday one of their most productive days yet battling a blaze that has been fueled by fierce Santa Ana winds sweeping in from eastern California deserts.

“We’re just hoping to make it home for Christmas,” Bakersfield Fire Department Captain Tim Ortiz said Sunday at a recreation center in Santa Barbara serving as a staging area and base camp for more than 3,000 firefighters.

The fire has destroyed more than 1,000 structures and threatened 18,000 others. Centered less than 100 miles (160 km) northwest of downtown Los Angeles, it has forced more than 104,000 people to evacuate or seek shelter.

On Sunday firefighters paid their respects during a funeral procession for Cal Fire engineer Cory Iverson, 32, who died of smoke inhalation and burns on Thursday while battling the flames near the Ventura County community of Fillmore.

Firefighters lined spots along the procession route that ran from Ventura County to his home near San Diego.

So far it has cost $123.8 million to battle the Thomas fire, which has forced many schools and roads to close for days and created poor air quality throughout southern California.

“I’ve seen people who have lost everything,” said Larry Dennis, 60, who sought refuge at a Ventura shelter Sunday after the blaze inundated the region with smoke and turned nearby hillsides red. Several areas of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties also saw evacuation orders lifted Sunday, Cal Fire said.

Five of the 20 most destructive fires in recorded history have ravaged the state in 2017, according to Cal Fire. The cause of the Thomas fire remains under investigation.

(Reporting by Chris Kenning; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

Victims of Mexico military abuses shudder at new security law

Activists hold a protest against a law that militarises crime fighting in the country outside the Senate in Mexico City, Mexico December 14, 2017. Placards read, "No to the Militarisation in the Country". Picture taken December 14, 2017.

By Lizbeth Diaz

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Human rights activist Juan Carlos Soni fears a new security law passed by Mexico’s Congress on Friday could mean his death after he suffered beatings, electrocution and abduction at the hands of the armed forces four years ago.

Bucking widespread protests from rights groups, Congress approved the Law of Internal Security, which will formally regulate the deployment of the military in Mexico more than a decade after the government dispatched it to fight drug cartels.

Proponents of the law argue it is needed to delimit the armed forces’ role in combating crime, while critics fear it will enshrine their purview, encouraging greater impunity and abuses in a country where justice is often notoriously weak.

Multiple human rights groups and international organizations, including the United Nations, attacked the bill, mindful of the dozens of reported cases of abuses by members of the military in Mexico over the past 11 years.

Soni, 46, a teacher from the central state of San Luis Potosi, whose case was documented by Mexico’s national human rights commission, related how in 2013 he was detained, blindfolded and tortured by marines after being warned by them to stop looking into alleged rights abuses.

While being held in a cellar, Soni said, he was made to leave fingerprints on guns and bags of marijuana and cocaine.

He was then arrested on charges of carrying an illegal weapon and drug possession, and spent 16 months in prison until he was released with the aid of U.N. representatives in Mexico.

“If they give them that power and send out the Navy again, I’m going to seek political asylum in another country,” Soni told Reuters shortly before the law passed Congress. “Much though I love my country, if I stay, they’ll kill me.”

The Navy subsequently acknowledged participating in abuses against Soni, but he said he has yet to receive any restitution.

The Navy did not immediately reply to request for comment.

“THE JOB WE WERE ASKED TO DO”

Well over 100,000 people have been killed in turf wars between the gangs and clashes with security force since former President Felipe Calderon first sent in the military to combat drug gangs shortly after taking office in December 2006.

Reports of abuse gradually crept up as the battle with the cartels intensified, and tens of thousands of people have gone missing or disappeared in the tumult.

Many of the most damaging scandals, from extra-judicial killings of suspected gang members to questions over the army’s failure to stop the disappearance of 43 students near a base in 2014, have come under President Enrique Pena Nieto.

Opponents of the military deployment say it has undermined trust in one of the most respected institutions in Mexico, as exposure to sickening violence and organized crime corroded the Army and the Navy just as it had the police.

“We don’t want to be on the streets, but this is the job we were asked to do,” said a soldier who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

Noting that personnel were often separated from their families for long periods, the soldier said the task of attempting to keep order was made harder by the lack of regulations governing how the military should proceed.

“It should be the police who are doing this, but they don’t have the necessary training,” he said.

Under Calderon and Pena Nieto, the armed forces played a major role in capturing or killing most of the top capos in Mexico. But they have not managed to pacify the country.

October was the most violent month on record since the government began keeping regular monthly tallies 20 years ago.

Relatives of the victims of abuses believe the new law will only give the military more cover to do what it wants.

“The Law of Internal Security won’t just protect them, it offers them more faculties to carry out human rights violations masquerading as security operations,” said Grace Mahogany Fernandez, whose brother was kidnapped and disappeared by the armed forces in December 2008 in the northern state of Coahuila.

(Editing by Dave Graham and Leslie Adler)

Strong quake hits Indonesia’s Java, kills three

JAKARTA (Reuters) – A powerful magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck the island of Java in Indonesia just before midnight on Friday, with authorities reporting three deaths and damage to hundreds of buildings.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the epicenter of the quake was located at a depth of 92 km (57 miles), about 52 km southwest of Tasikmalaya.

Indonesia’s national disaster management agency said the quake activated early tsunami warning systems in the south of Java, prompting thousands to evacuate from some coastal areas, but no tsunami was detected.

Tremors were felt in central and west Java.

Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for the disaster agency, said in a press briefing on Saturday three people had been killed, seven injured and hundreds of buildings damaged, including schools, hospitals, and government buildings in West and Central Java.

Dozens of patients had to be helped to safety from a hospital in Banyumas and were given shelter in tents, he said.

He posted on his Twitter page photos of people scouring collapsed buildings.

The quake swayed buildings for several seconds in the capital Jakarta. Some residents of high rise apartment buildings in central Jakarta quickly escaped their apartments, local media reported.

Indonesia’s meteorology and geophysics agency said a magnitude 5.7 quake early on Saturday also struck south of West Java. It said the quake did not have tsunami potential.

Java, Indonesia’s most densely populated island, is home to more than half of its 250 million people.

(Reporting by Kanupriya Kapoor, Agustinus Da Costa and Fransiska Nangoy; Writing by Ed Davies; Editing by Hugh Lawson & Shri Navaratnam)

Firefighter killed battling massive California blaze

By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A firefighter was killed on Thursday while battling a mammoth California wildfire as crews sought to protect coastal cities and towns in the path of flames that have destroyed more than 700 homes.

The flag-draped remains of firefighter Cory Iverson, 32, were driven out of the fire zone in Ventura County, northwest of Los Angeles, in a hearse as his comrades saluted from roadsides and overpasses.

“Anne and I are saddened by Engineer Cory Iverson’s tragic death. His bravery and years of committed service to the people of California will never be forgotten,” California Governor Jerry Brown said in a statement.

Fire officials released little information about the circumstances surrounding Iverson’s death, which came while he was fighting the so-called Thomas Fire, now the fourth-largest wildfire on record in California since 1932.

The Los Angeles Daily News reported that Iverson, a California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection engineer, perished in an accident near the community of Fillmore, where a mayday alert was sounded.

The Thomas Fire, which erupted on Dec. 4 near a small private college in Ojai, has since blackened more than 249,000 acres.

The conflagration advanced again overnight to surpass the Zaca Fire, which struck Santa Barbara County in 2007, charring 240,000 acres (97,120 hectares).

The Thomas Fire, which was 35 percent contained as of Thursday evening, has burned 729 single-family homes to the ground and damaged another 175. The blaze has displaced more than 94,000 people.

The wildfire remained a threat to some 18,000 homes and other structures in the communities of Santa Barbara, Carpinteria, Summerland and Montecito along California’s scenic coastline, especially if hot, dry Santa Ana winds return.

Red-flag warnings, issued for extreme fire weather conditions in the area, were extended through Friday morning.

“Right now, there really is a fear in the community. We’re very used to fire, but the magnitude of this one is something that we haven’t seen,” Monique Limon, a state assembly member whose districts includes parts of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, told Reuters

Many public schools in the Santa Barbara area canceled classes this week and will not reopen until the annual winter break ends in January.

Some of the other fires burning over the past week in San Diego and Los Angeles counties have largely been brought under control.

Investigators determined that the Skirball Fire, which destroyed six homes in Los Angeles’ wealthy Bel-Air neighborhood and scorched a building at a winery owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, was started by a cooking fire at a homeless encampment, the Los Angeles Fire Department said earlier this week.

The Lilac Fire, which burned more than 4,000 acres (1,620 hectares) in northern San Diego County and destroyed 157 structures, was 97 percent contained as of Thursday, Cal Fire said.

(Additional reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee, Bernie Woodall in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Ben Klayman in Detroit; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Leslie Adler)

Vicious winds to test crews battling California wildfire

By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Firefighters in California will be tested by vicious winds on Friday morning as they battle a huge wildfire that has claimed the life of one of their colleagues and torched more than 700 homes.

Cory Iverson, 32, a California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection engineer, was killed on Thursday while tackling the so-called Thomas Fire in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

“Cory Iverson … made the ultimate sacrifice to save the lives of others,” said Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean during a community meeting on Thursday night.

Fire officials released little information about the circumstances surrounding Iverson’s death. The Los Angeles Daily News reported that he perished in an accident near the community of Fillmore, where a mayday alert was sounded.

Santa Ana winds and humidity in the single digits has helped stoke the blaze that has swept through dry vegetation since it erupted on Dec. 4 near a small private college in Ojai. It has since blackened more than 249,000 acres (about 390 square miles, or 1,000 sq km) and is now the fourth-largest wildfire on record in California since 1932.

On Friday morning powerful winds are forecast which will subside during the day, the National Weather Service said.

“Winds will weaken Friday, turn westerly early Saturday, then become offshore and gusty again late Saturday night through Sunday evening,” the service said in an advisory.

The wildfire remained a threat to some 18,000 homes and other structures in the communities of Santa Barbara, Carpinteria, Summerland and Montecito along California’s coastline, especially if hot, dry Santa Ana winds return.

The Thomas Fire, which was 35 percent contained as of Thursday evening, has burned 729 homes to the ground and damaged another 175. The blaze has displaced more than 94,000 people.

The fire and others to the south in San Diego and Los Angeles counties have disrupted life for millions of people over the last 11 days.

They have caused schools to close for days, shut roads and driven hundreds of thousands from their homes and into shelters. The fires are also responsible for poor air quality throughout Southern California, forcing some commuters to wear protective face masks, local media reported.

(Additional reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; editing by Andrew Roche)

Six months on, Grenfell fire survivors weep at London memorial

By Estelle Shirbon

LONDON (Reuters) – Survivors of a blaze that killed 71 people six months ago in the Grenfell Tower social housing block in west London wept during a multi-faith memorial service at St Paul’s Cathedral on Thursday attended by members of the royal family.

Bereaved relatives held pictures of their loved ones as they commemorated Britain’s deadliest fire since World War Two, a tragedy that has profoundly shocked the nation.

Fire broke out in the middle of the night on June 14 and quickly gutted the 24-storey building, which was home to a multi-ethnic community living in a poor area within one of London’s richest boroughs, Kensington and Chelsea.

The disaster highlighted the area’s extreme disparities in living conditions between rich and poor and fueled a debate over why safety concerns voiced by tower residents before the fire had been ignored.

The service reflected the multi-cultural character of the Grenfell community, with Christian and Muslim prayers and music from Middle Eastern, Caribbean and Western traditions.

It also addressed the anger of many survivors over what they perceive as the neglect of their community before and after the fire. A majority of the hundreds of people displaced by the fire are still staying in hotels because suitable permanent homes have not been provided yet.

“Today we ask why warnings were not heeded, why a community was left feeling neglected, uncared for, not listened to,” Graham Tomlin, Bishop of Kensington, told the congregation.

“Today we hold out hope that the public inquiry will get to the truth of all that led up to the fire at Grenfell Tower … and we trust that the truth will bring justice.”

Police are investigating the fire and say charges may be brought against individuals or organizations. A separate public inquiry is under way on the causes of the fire and the authorities’ response.

Mourners pay their respects outside St Paul’s Cathedral after a memorial service in honour of the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire, in London, Britain, December 14, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville

“REMEMBER ME”

Prime Minister Theresa May, opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles and his sons Prince William and Prince Harry were among those attending the service along with bereaved families and firefighters who took part in the rescue effort on the night.

The devastation inside Grenfell Tower was such that it took police and forensic scientists several months to recover and identify all human remains. The final death toll was 53 adults and 18 children.

The service began when a white banner bearing a large green heart emblazoned with the word “Grenfell” was carried through the congregation to the pulpit by a Catholic priest and Muslim cleric from the area around the charred tower.

Later, a young Syrian musician played a mournful tune on the oud, an instrument commonly played in the Middle East and parts of Africa, where many Grenfell residents had ties.

A choir of Muslim schoolgirls performed a song called “Inshallah”, and survivor Nadia Jafari, who escaped from the tower but lost her elderly father Ali, read a poem called “Remember Me” by the 13th century Persian poet and scholar Rumi.

The service also included a rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” performed by a Caribbean-style steel band, and a performance of “Somewhere” from the musical “West Side Story.”

Schoolchildren from the Grenfell area scattered green hearts, a symbol of solidarity with the victims and survivors, around the cathedral’s altar.

(Editing by Stephen Addison)

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