By Caroline Stauffer
BUENOS AIRES, June 1 (Reuters) - Forensic scientists this month will start trying to identify the remains of Argentine soldiers buried in anonymous graves on the Falkland Islands after the country's 1982 conflict with Britain, the head of the mission said on Thursday.
There are 123 such graves in Darwin Cemetery in the South Atlantic, one of which contains multiple bodies, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) representatives overseeing the mission said at a news conference.
The ICRC has been interviewing families of dead Argentine soldiers since 2012 and around 100 have consented to DNA testing.
"I hope we will succeed in matching some of the graves," head of the mission Laurent Corbaz said. "The plaque on the graves should not remain 'Argentina soldier known only by God'."
In Britain's two-month-long war to reclaim the Falklands, 255 British and about 650 Argentine soldiers died, and it is still a sore point for Argentina.
Argentina's President Mauricio Macri has adopted a softer tone than his predecessor Cristina Fernandez but he has not relinquished Argentina's claim to the islands it calls Malvinas.
Argentina and Britain signed an agreement in December to try to identify the soldiers, splitting the $1.5 million cost. The team will consist of ICRC forensic scientists as well as two experts each from Argentina and Britain.
Exhumation and bone sampling is to begin on June 19 and will likely continue into August, Corbaz said, assuming one to three bodies per day can be analyzed and reburied. The ICRC chose the southern hemisphere winter to avoid interfering with tourism and sheep farming, Corbaz said.
DNA comparisons and analysis will be done at a lab in Cordoba, Argentina, and a final report should be ready by the end of the year, he added. Families will be informed of a match in an interview.
Retired British Army Colonel Geoffrey Cardozo, who then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher ordered in 1983 to recover the dead from various points on the island and set up Darwin Cemetery, will accompany part of the ICRC mission, Corbaz said.
"Fortunately he is still alive and accepted to accompany us for the first week" to help explain how he organized the cemetery, he said. (Reporting by Caroline Stauffer; Editing by James Dalgleish)
Scientists aim to identify remains of Argentine soldiers on Falklands
Scientists aim to identify remains of Argentine soldiers on Falklands
French publisher recalls dictionary over ‘Jewish settler’ reference
- The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks”
- The four books are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said
PARSI: French publisher Hachette on Friday said it had recalled a dictionary that described the Israeli victims of the October 7, 2023 attacks as “Jewish settlers” and promised to review all its textbooks and educational materials.
The Larousse dictionary for 11- to 15-year-old students contained the same phrase as that discovered by an anti-racism body in three revision books, the company told AFP.
The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks, Israel decided to tighten its economic blockade and invade a large part of the Gaza Strip, triggering a major humanitarian crisis in the region.”
The worst attack in Israeli history saw militants from the Palestinian Islamist group kill around 1,200 people in settlements close to the Gaza Strip and at a music festival.
“Jewish settlers” is a term used to describe Israelis living on illegally occupied Palestinian land.
The four books, which were immediately withdrawn from sale, are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said, promising a “thorough review of its textbooks, educational materials and dictionaries.”
France’s leading publishing group, which came under the control of the ultra-conservative Vincent Bollore at the end of 2023, has begun an internal inquiry “to determine how such an error was made.”
It promised to put in place “a new, strengthened verification process for all its future publications” in these series.
President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday said that it was “intolerable” that the revision books for the French school leavers’ exam, the baccalaureat, “falsify the facts” about the “terrorist and antisemitic attacks by Hamas.”
“Revisionism has no place in the Republic,” he wrote on X.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, with 251 people taken hostage, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Authorities in Gaza estimate that more than 70,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces during their bombardment of the territory since, while nearly 80 percent of buildings have been destroyed or damaged, according to UN data.
Israeli forces have killed at least 447 Palestinians in Gaza since a ceasefire took effect in October, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
