The Jim Bakker Show

Houston slowly begins grim recovery from Harvey’s devastation

A family puts their belongings on furniture to keep them above floodwaters in their house from Harvey in Houston, Texas August 31, 2017

By Gary McWilliams

HOUSTON (Reuters) – As water levels receded and search teams began checking abandoned homes for victims, Houston began a grim cleanup on Thursday and businesses began to reopen for the first time since Hurricane Harvey hit last weekend.

Previously flooded streets were lined with water-damaged furniture and roads filled with vehicles as residents went hunting for cleaning supplies, insurance estimates and repair help.

“It’s a bit overwhelming,” said John Becker as he salvaged personal items and hauled water-logged sheetrock from his home amid the hum of dehumidifiers and fans. Water that had reached 8 inches (20 cm) inside had ebbed. “We have flood insurance; we’ll do the best of it.”

Record rains and flooding from Harvey spread misery across a broad swath of the Houston metropolitan area of about 6.5 million people. Thursday brought a sense of it coming slowly back to life, however, with the city’s airports all operating again and the resumption of at least some public transportation services.

A Texas Department of Transportation worker monitors a temporary water filled dam keeping Harvey floodwaters from getting onto highway I-10 in Houston, Texas August 31, 2017. REUTERS/Rick Wilking

United began flying out of Houston’s Bush Intercontinental late on Wednesday and American Airlines restarted flights from Hobby airport Thursday morning.

Metro, which operates the city’s bus and rail services, resumed limited operations on 21 bus and one rail line routes responsible for carrying about half of its daily passengers, said spokeswoman Tracey Jackson.

The storm dumped as much as 50 inches (1.3 meters) of rain over four days in some parts of metropolitan Houston before the sun appeared on Wednesday. At one point early in the week, 10 percent to 15 percent of Harris County which includes Houston was underwater, officials said.

Houston hospitals were phasing in more services. Harris Health System said speciality clinics at its Ben Taub hospital would resume normal hours beginning Friday. M.D. Anderson Cancer Center was running “limited outpatient operations,” it said via Twitter on Thursday.

The county’s confirmed death toll from the storm reached 18 on Thursday and at least another eight deaths were being investigated as storm-related.

Most of Houston’s larger employers and schools will remain closed through the Labor Day holiday weekend. The transit restart and clear roads in many areas of the city encouraged businesses and banks to open their doors.

The Children’s Museum of Houston also reopened Thursday and expects about 1,000 visitors, said Executive Director Tammie Kahn. The museum sits on a working rail route and recalled staff to provide a respite for families and kids housed in emergency shelters.

“We turned people away from the door yesterday because we were not open,” said Kahn. The museum is free to children from emergency shelters, and decided to reopen with the start of mass transit. “We did this during (Hurricane) Katrina. It’s a great benefit and deeply appreciated,” she said.

Regional power companies continued to reduce the number of homes without power. Electric service providers from Corpus Christi to Louisiana reported 200,000 homes and businesses were dark on Thursday, down from more than 300,000 customers at the peak, according to data from AEP, Entergy, Centerpoint Energy and TNMP.

(Reporting by Gary McWilliams; Editing by Tom Brown)

Stranded Texans turn to social media for help as flood waters rise

Women are illuminated by the light of a smart phone as they seek refuge in the Good Samaritan Rescue Mission in Corpus Christi.

By Peter Szekely

(Reuters) – Flood-stranded Texans in the Houston area took to social media on Sunday with desperate pleas to be rescued from their homes as Tropical Storm Harvey and its torrential rains slowly lumbered across the region.

With authorities urging Houston’s more than 2 million residents to stay in their homes rather than risk venturing outside, some 70,000 of them formed a Facebook group that many of them used to call for help.

“Rescue needed!!” Lorena Martinez posted on the group, known “Hurricane Harvey 2017 – Together We Will Make It; TOGETHER WE WILL REBUILD.”

Martinez said 20 people, including six children, an elderly person and a pregnant woman, were stranded in a house on Houston’s Roper Street.

“Tried emergency service but not responding,” she said. “They’re in the attic with ax on hand if necessary.”

Many Houston residents reported being holed up in their attics, some with axes to chop their way out if necessary, even though emergency services advised people to climb onto the roofs to escape rising waters.

“Anyone in the area that can help… 4 adults 4 kids stuck in the attic.. no tools to break/cut into the roof,” said Carolyn Withrow Hutchins, who also posted a map with the location.

Emergency crews had rescued more than 1,000 stranded people from cars and homes in the Houston area by early Sunday.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott said the state was adding helicopters to those operated by officials in Houston and Harris County to help rescue stranded residents.

“Before today, the state had already made multiple water rescues from helicopters from dropped lines, and we are prepared to continue that process,” Abbott said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program.

Many residents posted that they were unable to reach emergency services by phone or were told that their rescues would take several hours.

Kathaleen Hervey was among many who turned to Twitter for help, saying a resident she knew needed to be rescued.

“He is trapped and can’t get through 911 or any of the emergency numbers, send a boat!!!” she tweeted to Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner.

Turner said emergency responders were giving their highest priority to the most flood-ravaged areas.

“911 is working,” Turner tweeted. “Every need is important. Please give preference to life-threatening situations.”

(Reporting by Peter Szekely in New York; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

At G20 summit, Trump promises $639 million in food, humanitarian aid

U.S. President Donald Trump attends a working session at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, northern Germany, Saturday, July 8, 2017.REUTERS/Markus Schreiber, Pool

HAMBURG (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday promised $639 million in funding for humanitarian programs, including $331 million to help feed starving people in four famine-hit countries – Somalia, South Sudan, Nigeria and Yemen.

Trump’s pledge came during a working session of the G20 summit of world leaders in Hamburg, providing a “godsend” to the U.N. World Food Programme, the group’s executive director, David Beasley, told Reuters on the sidelines of the meeting.

“We’re facing the worst humanitarian crisis since World War Two,” said Beasley, a Republican and former South Carolina governor who was nominated by Trump to head the world’s largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide.

He said the additional funding was about a third of what the agency estimated was required this year to deal with urgent food needs in the four countries facing famine and in other areas.

The WFP estimates that 109 million people around the world will need food assistance this year, up from 80 million last year, with 10 of the 13 worst affected zones stemming from wars and “man-made” crises, Beasley said.

“We estimated that if we didn’t receive the funding we needed immediately that 400,000 to 600,000 children would be dying in the next four months,” he said.

Trump’s announcement came after his administration proposed sharp cuts in funding for the U.S. State Department and other humanitarian missions as part of his “America First” policy.

Beasley said the agency had worked hard with the White House and the U.S. government to secure the funding, but Trump would insist that other countries contributed more as well.

A WPF spokesman said Germany recently pledged an additional 200 million euros for food relief.

The United States has long been the largest donor to the WFP.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; editing by John Stonestreet)

Alive but still reeling one year after Florida nightclub shooting

Kaliesha Andino, a wounded survivor of the mass shooting at Florida's Pulse nightclub is seen hugging her mother in Orlando, Florida, U.S., on April 25, 2017. REUTERS/Letitia Stein

By Letitia Stein

ORLANDO, Fla. (Reuters) – Kaliesha Andino has spent the last year running from gunshots. At night, she flashes back to her hiding spot behind a bar in a Florida nightclub, where a bullet ripped through her arm during the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

The date her life shattered, June 12, 2016, is tattooed in Roman numerals on her other arm, along with images of clouds and an eye to memorialize a friend who was among the 49 people killed at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.

Like others who got out alive, Andino, 20, has spent the year since the attack navigating the line between victim and survivor. Her physical wounds have healed. But she searches for exits in crowded rooms and has not been working.

“I will never have closure,” she said, adding: “I’ve got to live right now. I have to cope with the situation.”

The death toll in the attack marked the worst in a spate of U.S. shooting rampages in recent years – from Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut to an office party in San Bernardino, California – that stoked debate about gun control and left communities grappling with deep emotional and physical wounds.

Counseling and medical needs have consumed many survivors working to establish a new normal after gunman Omar Mateen opened fire at Pulse during Latin music night. Some saw their trauma magnified when the tragedy at the gay club outed them as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT).

One survivor recently had a lodged bullet removed. Others have struggled at times to leave home after the rampage, which also left more than 50 people injured.

Mateen held hostages inside for three hours before he died in an exchange of gunfire with police.

“They are still so raw,” said attorney Antonio Romanucci, who is suing Mateen’s ex-employer and widow on behalf of dozens of victims, including Andino and relatives of some of the deceased. “They are still living it.”

Approximately 300 people who were at the club or directly tied to the victims still receive support services from the Orlando United Assistance Center. That is down from the more than 800 helped in the immediate aftermath, said Michael Aponte, director for the resource hub, which involves government and community groups.

NOT READY TO MOVE ON

Rainbow-colored banners adorn the chain-link fence around Pulse. People from around the world have left mementos and scrawled notes, now fading in the sun. “Never stop dancing,” reads an inscription on a parking lot barrier.

To honor the one-year mark on Monday, June 12, Pulse owner Barbara Poma plans to open the club gate so survivors and victims’ relatives can gather inside at 2:02 a.m., when the first shots were fired.

“Everybody is still in very different places,” Poma said. “I would not say there is anybody that is ready to move on.”

At unexpected moments, 31-year-old Juan Jose Cufiño’s thoughts return to the night that started as a celebration with friends two days before he was to return to his native Colombia.

He hears bullets pounding the floor and people screaming, he said in Spanish through a translator. He smells blood.

The first shot to hit him struck his right arm. Two more tore into his legs. Falling to his knees, Cufiño waited for a fatal blow. A fourth shot pierced his back.

When police arrived waving flashlights, the former physical education teacher mustered all his strength to signal that he was alive. He remembers an officer dragging him out by an arm.

Three months later, Cufiño awoke from a medically induced coma and learned he would never walk again.

After a year of surgeries and rehabilitation, Cufiño still needs help dressing. But he can lift himself out of his wheelchair and hopes one day to prove medical experts wrong.

“In this moment, I don’t know what it is to be a survivor,” he said in Spanish. “I think I am still a victim.”

(Reporting by Letitia Stein; editing by Colleen Jenkins and Dan Grebler)

Colombia starts to bury 273 landslide victims, search continues

New coffins for reburials, are seen in a cemetery after flooding and mudslides caused by heavy rains leading several rivers to overflow, pushing sediment and rocks into buildings and roads, in Mocoa, Colombia April 3, 2017. REUTERS/Jaime Saldarriaga

MOCOA, Colombia (Reuters) – Scores of decomposing cadavers were being released for burial on Monday as rescuers continued to search for victims of weekend flooding and landslides that devastated a city in southern Colombia, killing at least 273 people.

Desperate families queued for blocks in the heat to search a morgue for loved ones who died when several rivers burst their banks in the early hours of Saturday, sending water, mud and debris crashing down streets and into houses as people slept.

Bodies wrapped in white sheets lay on the concrete floor of the morgue as officials sought to bury them as soon as possible to avoid the spread of disease. The government has begun vaccination against infection.

“Please speed up delivery of the bodies because they are decomposing,” said Yadira Andrea Munoz, a 45-year-old housewife who expected to receive the remains of two relatives who died in the tragedy.

But officials asked for families to be patient.

“We don’t want bodies to be delivered wrongly,” said Carlos Eduardo Valdes, head of the forensic science institute.

The death toll has ticked up during the day as rescuers searched with dogs and machinery in the mud-choked rubble.

Aerial view of a neighborhood destroyed after flooding and mudslides caused by heavy rains leading several rivers to overflow, pushing sediment and rocks into buildings and roads, in Mocoa, Colombia April 3, 2017. REUTERS/Jaime Saldarriaga

Many families in Mocoa have spent days and nights digging through the debris with their hands despite a lack of food, clean water and electricity.

President Juan Manuel Santos, who made a third visit to the area on Monday, blamed climate change for the disaster, saying Mocoa had received one-third of its usual monthly rain in just one night, causing the rivers to burst their banks.

Others said deforestation in surrounding mountains meant there were few trees to prevent water washing down bare slopes.

More than 500 people were staying in emergency housing and social services had helped 10 lost children find their parents. As many as 43 children were killed.

Families of the dead will receive about $6,400 in aid and the government will cover hospital and funeral costs.

Even in a country where heavy rains, a mountainous landscape and informal construction combine to make landslides a common occurrence, the scale of the Mocoa disaster was daunting compared with recent tragedies, including a 2015 landslide that killed nearly 100 people.

Colombia’s deadliest landslide, the 1985 Armero disaster, killed more than 20,000 people.

Santos urged Colombians to take precautions against flooding and continued rains.

Flooding in Peru last month killed more than 100 people and destroyed infrastructure.

(Reporting by Andres Rojas, Helen Murphy Luis Jaime Acosta and Jaime Saldarriaga; Editing by James Dalgleish and Lisa Shumaker)

Syria’s unaccompanied children biggest victims of war: UNICEF

Geert Cappelaere, Unicef regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, speaks during an interview with Reuters in Beirut, Lebanon March 15, 2017. REUTERS/Jamal Saidi

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Children have suffered the most in Syria’s six-year war, and among them the most vulnerable are those separated from their families, a senior Unicef official told Reuters on Wednesday.

Furthemore, as well as the large number of direct casualties from warfare, many more children have died or suffered from indirect consequences of the crisis including a collapse in healthcare.

“For unaccompanied and separated children the situation is even harsher than for other children, and for children in general it’s already a very, very difficult situation,” said Geert Cappelaere, Unicef regional director for the Middle East and North Africa.

Unicef, the United Nation’s agency focusing on children, issued a report on Monday on the war in Syria, which began after protests six years ago against President Bashar al-Assad.

In its report, Unicef said it had documented the deaths of 652 children last year, 20 percent more than in 2015. But Cappelaere said that represented only a small proportion of the real number of deaths.

“In 2016 every six hours a child dying or severely injured in Syria … dramatic figures. But these are only the figures we have been able to verify. We do assume that indeed the number of child casualties is really much higher,” he said.

Documenting the real impact of the war is “an impossible task,” he added.

Cappelaere returned on Tuesday from a three-day visit to Damascus, Homs and Aleppo, a city that suffered massive destruction in siege-and-bombardment fighting that culminated late last year when the army overran a last rebel-held pocket.

He was speaking to Reuters in an interview in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, where more than a million Syrians have sought refuge from the war, including many who now live in informal, makeshift camps with few services.

Cappelaere said that in the Jibreen shelter for displaced people in Aleppo on Tuesday, each of the three newly arrived families he spoke to was carrying a child separated from its family – a measure of the extent of the problem.

“Many of these children are also undocumented. They don’t have their paper…. The problem is not only for tracing (their families), but also for registering in the shelter, the problem of registering them in the schools,” he said.

Even more than other children in Syria’s war, those separated from their families are vulnerable to exploitation.

Already about three-quarters of children in Syria are working and there is what Cappelaere called a “very rapid” rise in the number of early marriages, particularly among girls, because families cannot afford to feed and look after them.

However, there are still signs of hope amid the devastation, Cappelaere said.

“We were driving out of Aleppo yesterday – 15 minutes of driving in the midst of rubble – and suddenly we see two, three, four children with their backpacks on the way to school,” he said.

(Reporting by Angus McDowall; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

Jordanian soldier who shot Israeli schoolgirls walks free from jail

Ahmad Daqamseh, a Jordanian soldier convicted of killing seven Israeli schoolgirls on March 13, 1997, is seen at Um Alluol prison in the city of Mafraq, Jordan, July 30, 2013. Picture taken July 30, 2013. REUTERS/Muhammad Hamed

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi

AMMAN (Reuters) – A Jordanian soldier who killed seven Israeli schoolgirls has been freed after serving 20 years in prison, with many Jordanians celebrating his release and calling him a national hero, witnesses and family sources said on Sunday.

Ahmad Daqamseh, 45, was taken to his family home in the village of Ibdir near the city of Irbid in northern Jordan where dozens of relatives and wellwishers gave him a rousing welcome.

Jordanian security services set up checkpoints around the village to restrict access as people flocked to see him.

In July 1997, a five-member Jordanian military tribunal found Daqamseh guilty of opening fire on a group of Israeli schoolchildren and killing seven of them before soldiers seized him and rushed to help the victims.

Daqamseh became a hero to many Jordanians and was embraced as a figurehead by a strong opposition movement led by Islamists and nationalists vehemently opposed to the country’s peace treaty with Israel.

During the trial, Daqamseh said the girls had mocked him while he was performing Muslim prayers in a border area returned to Jordanian sovereignty under the 1994 peace treaty.

He would have faced the death penalty but the tribunal ruled he was mentally unstable and sentenced him to life imprisonment, which is equivalent to 20 years under Jordanian law.

A few days after the incident, the late King Hussein personally apologized for the incident, traveling to Israel to visit and pay his respects to the girls’ families.

Many lawmakers welcomed his release. Neither the Jordanian nor the Israeli government made any comment.

“The release of this hero has cheered us. Israel has committed crimes against many Jordanians that were never accounted for,” Saleh Armouti, a leading parliamentarian, said.

One Israeli survivor, Keren Mizrahi, said Daqamseh’s release revived painful memories and he had served a light sentence.

“My feeling is that it’s like I’m being wounded again, mentally and physically, as if a knife is turned inside my heart,” she was quoted as saying on Israeli Channel 10 TV.

A defiant Daqamseh told Al Jazeera he did not recognize Israel, saying Arabs could not have normal ties with what he termed “the Zionist entity”.

Jordan’s biggest political opposition group, the Islamic Action Front, which is the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, hailed his release.

“We congratulate Jordan and the family of the hero Ahmad al Daqmaseh his release from prison,” it said in a statement.

Many lawmakers and politicians had lobbied to set him free in a kingdom where hostility toward Israel runs deep.

Many Jordanians see Israel as an occupier state which has driven them from their land. Palestinians originally from Jordan make up a large proportion of the country’s population.

(Editing by Louise Ireland)

Nigerian musician Femi Kuti urges stars, fans to focus on Boko Haram victims

Musician exlaims to help victims of Boko Haram

By Kieran Guilbert

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Nigerian musician Femi Kuti on Monday urged his fellow celebrities and their fans to take to social media and pressure the government to do more to help millions of people struggling to survive in Boko Haram-hit northeast Nigeria.

The Lagos-based Afrobeat star said he wanted to raise awareness among young Nigerians and encourage them to demand a greater humanitarian response, having visited Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, on Monday.

“People need to have a sense of the reality in the northeast – from people walking around hungry to mothers with malnourished children,” Kuti said during his visit to Borno, the heart of Boko Haram’s seven-year campaign to create an Islamic caliphate.

“I hope more celebrities will visit and engage with their fans,” Kuti told the Thomson Reuters Foundation after accompanying the International Rescue Committee (IRC) on visits to local communities hosting the displaced and a health clinic.

“Then more people will see what is going on, share it on social media, and put pressure on the government to do more.”

Boko Haram’s insurgency has killed about 15,000 people and forced more than two million to flee their homes since 2009.

The Nigerian army, backed up by neighbors, has retaken most areas held by the Islamist militants. Yet the jihadist group has stepped up attacks and suicide bombings in the past few weeks as the end of the rainy season facilitates movements in the bush.

While calling on more support and aid for people in the northeast, Kuti said he was struck by the generosity of local communities towards those who uprooted by the insurgency.

“It is heartening to see so many displaced people welcomed into the homes of local families … and community elders offering to give up land to displaced for farming,” Kuti said.

In Maiduguri, which has seen its population almost triple to five million in recent years, there are signs a sense of normality is gradually returning to the city.

The curfew has been pushed back to 10 pm, from 6 pm, and clubs are packed and pulsating as DJs play the tunes of artists like Kuti and his late father Fela, the 1970s Afrobeat pioneer.

Yet there is still much to be done, and many people to help, before Maiduguri can be considered back to normal, Kuti said.

“There are still so many young people who are displaced, who have lost their parents, who cannot go home yet.” he said.” They cannot party, and it is them we must worry about the most.”

(Reporting By Kieran Guilbert, Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Iraqis who escaped Islamic State grapple with trauma

Displaced people, who fled Islamic State militants, cross the bridge in Al-Muthanna neighborhood of Mosul, Iraq,

By Stephen Kalin

DEBAGA, Iraq (Reuters) – While fleeing Islamic State rule in northern Iraq three months ago, Laila saw two of her daughters die in front of her. Crippled by grief and the trauma of that night, she now struggles to walk and hardly eats.

Running under the cover of darkness after more than two years under the jihadists’ harsh rule in Shirqat town, south of Mosul, Laila’s children stepped on a mine. The youngest one died on the spot, covered in blood and partially buried in the dirt.

Her 16-year-old daughter had a leg blown off and lost consciousness. Laila tied the girl’s leg with her own headscarf, then carried her on her back for several kilometers to the Iraqi army’s frontline.

“I could hear her soul leaving her body, her head on my shoulder,” she recounted earlier this month at a nearby camp for internally displaced people (IDPs) where she now struggles with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The battle to retake Mosul, Islamic State’s last major stronghold in Iraq, is playing out among the city’s nearly 1.5 million residents who have spent 2-1/2 years under the ultra-hardline group’s repression.

The militants have employed extreme violence to impose their strict interpretation of Islamic law in territories they seized in 2014, whipping people for smoking, cutting off hands for stealing, stoning women for adultery, and throwing men off of buildings for homosexuality.

Several thousand civilians have been killed or wounded in the street-to-street fighting since the U.S.-backed offensive began in October.

Nearby camps are full of civilians displaced from in and around Mosul and many suffer from depression and anxiety disorders, aid groups say.

“I feel lost, my life has no meaning anymore,” said Laila. “If your car is stolen, you can buy another one. If your house is destroyed you can build another one. But a life cannot be replaced.”

She is taking psychotropic medication and attends weekly counseling sessions run by aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), but she says nothing helps.

“Treatment cannot heal a heart in pain,” she said.

MASS TRAUMA

In a nearby tent at Debaga sits a young mother of three, from another village south of Mosul. She looks about twice her 20 years and speaks in a monotone, rarely making eye contact.

It was during their escape last autumn that she went into labor, giving birth to twins. The couple declined to go into details about the circumstances of the birth, but the woman has since been diagnosed with depression and PTSD.

A counselor says she has struck her husband and tried to kill one of her babies. She also has suicidal feelings but refuses medication.

“She is talking to you normally right now, but sometimes she chokes the baby and tells me, ‘I don’t want him, you take him’,” her husband said. Their names are withheld by Reuters to protect their safety.

Their flight is just one of a raft of deeply traumatic events suffered by their family in recent years, and by many others like them.

They had not yet fled their village when Islamic State fighters stormed their home, accusing the husband of sedition. A former policeman, he had worked with U.S. forces following the 2003 invasion.

The militants shot in the air around him, then put a machine gun to his head and dragged him off to a mosque where they beat him.

Another time, an air strike destroyed a neighbor’s house. Their dog picked through the rubble and dragged back human remains.

“There were parts left there, a hand or a leg,” the woman said. “The dog brought them to our front yard and chewed on them in front of our kids.”

LIMITED ACCESS TO MEDICATION

Pre-existing mental health conditions affecting IDPs have been exacerbated by limited access to medication under IS rule and the trauma of displacement.

Those still in Mosul have even fewer opportunities for treatment, as is the case for those affected by physical illness and the wounded.

A resident of Muharibeen district told Reuters last week that his mother fell into a coma more than a month ago when Islamic State fighters stormed their house.

He pleaded in vain for an ambulance to transport her to nearby Erbil, the capital of the relatively peaceful, autonomous Kurdish region, where hospitals treat those of Mosul’s wounded civilians who make it there. As of Friday, his mother was still at home in Mosul, and still unconscious.

Another local man said his five-year-old daughter, who has a brain defect due to premature birth, has been unable to obtain medicine for more than two years. She can barely speak.

Treatment of the displaced is hampered by the continued violence in Mosul.

“The rate of relapse is very high… because the IDPs on a daily basis receive painful news and stories,” said Bilal Budair, MSF’s mental health manager.

“So we treat and support them, but the bad news has an opposite effect and sets back some of the patients to zero.”

(Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

Retiree and volunteer fireman among Florida airport shooting fatalities

People on the airport ramp area near terminals 1 and 2 are seen following a shooting incident at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida,

By Gina Cherelus

(Reuters) – A volunteer firefighter in his sixties and a retiree en route to a cruise ship vacation with her husband were among the five travelers fatally gunned down during Friday’s airport attack in Florida, according to relatives and friends.

Authorities have not named any of the victims of the rampage in a crowded baggage claim area at Fort Lauderdale’s airport, which also left six others shot and dozens more with injuries suffered in the chaos as people fled.

But a picture of some of those killed began to emerge on Saturday from local media reports and in testimonials by family and friends.

Terry Andres, a volunteer fireman from Virginia Beach, Virginia, was at the airport to go on vacation with his wife, his daughter told local broadcaster WAVY-TV.

She said he would have been celebrating his 63rd birthday later this month. He was shot multiple times, WAVY-TV reported, but his wife of 40 years was not hurt.

Andres had served since 2004 with the Oceana Volunteer Fire Department, where he was remembered fondly.

“He was well liked and respected for both his dedication to being a volunteer as well as his professional approach to his job as a support tech,” the department said in a statement on Saturday. “We mourn his passing as we do all the victims of the senseless attack in Ft. Lauderdale.”

Another of those killed was Olda Woltering, a retiree from Marietta, Georgia who was on vacation with her husband Ralph, according to people who recalled her as a prominent figure at the city’s Transfiguration Catholic Church.

“She was a wonderful wife, mother, grandmother, great grandmother and friend,” said Chip Oudt, a fellow churchgoer who said they had been close. “She will be missed.”

Woltering joined the church with her husband in 1978. Others who worshipped there described her as always happy.

“Olga was so charming, calling everybody ‘Lovey’ or ‘Love’ in her unmistakable British accent,” church officials said in a statement. “Her life revolved around her kids, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and hundreds of extended family at Transfiguration.”

A third fatality was Michael Oehme of Council Bluffs, Iowa. He had also been on his way to take a cruise ship vacation with his wife when he was shot.

His wife, Kari Oehme, was shot in the shoulder and will survive, according to Omaha television station WOWT.

Mark Lea, a witness who told the station he saw the couple at the scene, recalled running to help the victims.

“Did not know her any way, shape or form,” Lea said of Kari Oehme. “I saw that she was down and injured in a pool of blood, which was hers and just stopped to help and console her and kind of minimize her from going further into shock.”

Authorities say three of the six victims taken to the hospital with gunshot wounds are in intensive care, while the others are in good condition. They have not given more details.

(Reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Chris Reese)

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