FRANCE: More than 60 people who died in a heatwave in France this summer and whose bodies have not been claimed will be buried in a ceremony in Paris today, a newspaper said.
France recorded around 11,400 more deaths than usual in the first two weeks of August. Pensioners were hit hardest as rocketing temperatures caused dehydration and hyperthermia.
The burial of the unclaimed bodies, mostly elderly people, is another gruesome chapter of the heatwave, which has seen refrigerator trucks and even a cool hall in a wholesale food market drafted into service as temporary morgues.
The daily Le Parisien yesterday published the names of 66 dead whose bodies have not been claimed, saying they would be buried today in a section of Paris's Thiais cemetery, which is normally reserved for the poor. Relatives who came forward after the funeral would have the right for five years to exhume the bodies, Le Parisien said.- (Reuters)
