Tag Archives: victims

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

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)

Nice prepares to remember attack victims in special ceremony

A woman stands near a memorial to the victims of the July 14 attack on the Promenade des Anglais, two days before a national tribute in Nice, France, October 12, 2016. REUTERS

NICE, France (Reuters) – Three months after a man plowed his truck into crowds on France’s national day in Nice, the southern coastal city is trying to recover as it prepares to remember the 86 victims in a national ceremony of remembrance.

Tributes line the sea-front promenade along which Tunisian-born Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel drove a 19-ton truck, mowing down people watching fireworks on France’s July 14 Bastille Day, before police shot him dead.

Curious visitors and grieving locals stop to look at bouquets of flowers, toys and yellowing notes left in memory of the victims.

“We haven’t forgotten it. People are less trusting, more nervous and the atmosphere is heavier,” said Stephanie Marton, a mother of five who was on the promenade with her children that night. “(It) is not at all like what it was before July 14.”

Marton said the family, who threw themselves onto the ground out of the way of the truck hurtling toward them, still lives in the shadow of the attack.

People walk past a memorial to the victims of the July 14 attack on the Promenade des Anglais, two days before a national tribute in Nice, France,

People walk past a memorial to the victims of the July 14 attack on the Promenade des Anglais, two days before a national tribute in Nice, France, October 12, 2016. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard

“Three months later, it’s still in their heads and it’s still hard for them,” she said. “They still have nightmares at night – and I sometimes get them too – and they find it really hard to be near the promenade.”

Nice was due to hold a national ceremony of remembrance, led by French President Francois Hollande, on Friday, exactly three months after the attack.

But a statement from his Elysee Palace on Thursday said the event, on a hill overlooking the French Riviera and attended by survivors and victims’ families, will now take place on Saturday due to bad weather.

(Reporting by Michel Bernouin; Writing by Johnny Cotton and Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

Accused bomber to be arraigned on New Jersey charges Thursday

A policeman takes a photo of a man they identified as Ahmad Khan Rahami, who is wanted for questioning in connection with an explosion in New York City, as he is placed into an ambulance in Linden, New Jersey, in this still image taken from video

Oct 11 (Reuters) – A man accused of bombings in New York and New Jersey last month that injured dozens is set to be arraigned on New Jersey state charges on Thursday, one of his attorneys said on Tuesday.

Ahmad Khan Rahami, who was born in Afghanistan, is set to be arraigned at the Union County Courthouse by video feed from his hospital room where he is recovering from gunshot wounds suffered during his arrest, Alexander Shalom said. Union County prosecutors charged Rahami with five counts of attempted murder of a police officer and weapons charges.

Shalom, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, is temporarily representing Rahami on separate federal charges until public defenders can take over the case.

Rahami, 28, has been held in a Newark, New Jersey, hospital with wounds suffered during a shootout with police on Sept. 19 when he was arrested. He faces federal charges in both states stemming from a bombing the previous weekend in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood that injured 31 people, and explosives found in two New Jersey locations. No one was killed in the blasts.

He also is accused of planting another pressure-cooker bomb in Chelsea that failed to explode, and multiple devices at a
train station in Elizabeth, New Jersey. One of those exploded as a bomb squad robot attempted to defuse it.

Authorities described Rahami as a “jihadist” who begged for martyrdom and praised late al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Rahami bought bomb components on eBay, made a video of himself testing out homemade explosives, and kept a journal expressing outrage at the U.S. “slaughter” of mujahideen in Afghanistan,
Iraq, Syria and the Palestinian Territories, federal officials allege.

(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Cluster bombs kill more than 400 people over a third of them children

A file photo shows an unexploded cluster bomblet along a street after airstrikes by pro-Syrian government forces in the rebel held al-Ghariyah al-Gharbiyah town,

By Magdalena Mis

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – More than 400 people were killed by cluster bombs in 2015, most of them dying in Syria, Yemen and Ukraine, which have not signed up to a treaty banning the weapon, an international anti-cluster bomb coalition said on Thursday.

Cluster bombs, dropped by air or fired by artillery, scatter hundreds of bomblets across a wide area which sometimes fail to explode and are difficult to locate and remove, killing and maiming civilians long after conflicts end.

They pose a particular risk to children who can be attracted by their toy-like appearance and bright colors.

In 2015, cluster bombs killed 417 people, more than a third of them children, the Cluster Munition Coalition said, adding that the actual number of casualties was likely to be much higher.

“The suffering is still continuing and civilians continue to be the predominant victims of cluster bombs,” said Jeff Abramson, program manager at Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor, which is part of the coalition.

“Unfortunately now we’re seeing a new spate of people being injured at the time of attack, which is something that needs to be condemned very strongly,” he told Thomson Reuters Foundation by telephone from Geneva.

Abramson did not give figures for 2014, saying data was constantly being revised due to difficulties in gathering it, especially in conflict zones like Syria.

The majority of cluster bomb casualties in 2015 were in Syria (248), followed by Yemen (104) and Ukraine (19), the coalition said in a report.

None of these countries are signatories of the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which prohibits the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of the weapons, it said.

The Convention, which came into force in 2010, also requires the destruction of stockpiles of cluster bombs and clearance of contaminated areas.

Since August 2015, five more countries – Colombia, Iceland, Palau, Rwanda and Somalia – have ratified the Convention, while Cuba and Mauritius acceded, bringing the total number of states that have signed or accepted the treaty to 119, the coalition said.

Casualties were also recorded in Laos, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Western Sahara, Chad, Cambodia and Nagorno-Karabakh.

The report was published ahead of the Sixth Meeting of states Parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions that will be held in Geneva on Sept. 5-7.

(Reporting by Magdalena Mis; Editing by Katie Nguyen.; Please credit Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)

Orlando hospitals won’t charge nightclub shooting victims for care

Gunshot survivor Angel Colon is surrounded by doctors as he listens to remarks at a news conference at the Orlando Regional Medical Center o

By Colleen Jenkins

(Reuters) – Two Florida hospitals will not seek payment of medical bills from the dozens of people treated for injuries suffered in the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in June, officials at the health facilities said.

The move leaves the hospitals with estimated unreimbursed costs topping $5.5 million, they said on Thursday.

Forty-nine people were killed and 53 were wounded by gunman Omar Mateen before police fatally shot him after a three-hour standoff inside the gay dance club on June 12.

Gunshot survivor Patience Carter is comforted by Dr. Neil Finkler as fellow survivor Angel Santiago looks on at a news conference at Florida Hospital Orlando on the shooting at the

Gunshot survivor Patience Carter (2nd L) is comforted by Dr. Neil Finkler as fellow survivor Angel Santiago (R) looks on at a news conference at Florida Hospital Orlando on the shooting at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, U.S., June 14, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Young/File Photo

U.S. authorities said Mateen was self-radicalized and acted alone, without assistance or orders from abroad, to commit the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

“It was incredible to see how our community came together in the wake of the senseless Pulse shooting,” said Daryl Tol, president and CEO of Florida Hospital. “We hope this gesture can add to the heart and goodwill that defines Orlando.”

Florida Hospital treated 12 shooting victims at a cost of about $525,400, it said.

Orlando Health said in a statement that it expects to absorb costs exceeding $5 million after payments from funding sources such as insurance plans. Its main hospital, Orlando Regional Medical Center, treated 44 patients at its trauma center located a few blocks from the nightclub.

One patient hurt in the attack remains in guarded condition at the hospital, spokeswoman Sabrina Childress said in an email.

“During this very trying time, many organizations, individuals, and charities have reached out to Orlando Health to show their support,” Orlando Health President and CEO David Strong said in a statement. “This is simply our way of paying that kindness forward.”

The nightclub remains closed. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton made a quick stop at the memorial outside Pulse on Wednesday, the Orlando Sentinel newspaper reported.

(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins in Winston-Salem, N.C.; Editing by Bill Trott)