they enter the sunk ken -- sunken ferry for the last time and find no one. ♪ and it appears the captain wasn't at the helm at the time of the accident. hello, this is al jazeera, we are live in doha and they reach a deal for the crisis in ukraine but skepticism in the u.s. about russia's intentions. human rights in north korea under the spotlight at the u.n.

for the first time. and remembering the master of magical realism, tribute bound for the columbia gabrielle garcia marquez who has died at the age of 87. ♪ now it's been two days since the ferry capsized off the coast of south korea and hundreds of passengers are still missing. now the ship is submerged now but cranes at some point will try to raise the vessel. the number of dead has unfortunately increased to 28, most of those unaccounted for are school children. now divers have been able to get into the ship for the first time in the past two days, but they didn't find any trace of passengers. families of the passengers awaiting at a nearby school for updates, many of the parents are

angry at what they call the slow progress of the rescue. now we will be going live to the scene of that rescue operation off the south of korea and an avalanc avalanched killed 12 people and others missing on mt. even -- everest and they were preparing routes for claimers and prepared to reach it in may and people tried to climb the mountain since it was first conquered in 1953, about 243 people died on the slopes. a rescue mission is under wway. >> translator: an avalanche swept the area near camp one at 5800 meters this morning. and where guides and team leaders were, as soon as we

heard about it people at the base camp responded immediately and rescuers and medical workers were rushed to the scene. >> reporter: ukraine and russia struck a deal to ease tensions in eastern ukraine and it came after hours of talk with the u.s. and eu. under the deal all armed groups in ukraine must dispanned and leave the buildings it occupied, in return kiev will grand am necessity to antigovernment protesters who have not committed capital crimes. these steps are monitored by the osce and the ukrainian government as agreed to be transparent in its plan to reform the constitution by establishing a broad, national dialog. one of the buildings under siege is in the city there and pro-moscow groups are manning barricades rounds this building for more than a week now and our corresponde

correspondent has been speaking to the fighters there and sent us this update. >> as of yesterday they were regarding moscow as the mother land and savior and putin will come and save them if they come under attack or antiterrorist campaign that the acting president has been talking about would have reached their locations. now i think there is a bit of disappointment. i think they feel slightly abandoned even though they want tell you that in so many words and one of the commanders was telling me when he heard about what he said he had to read the statement over and over again to make sure he was actually to believe the words that he was reading. so there was a huge surprise. i asked him about the fact that they were branded as illegal. and he said, yes, we are illegal and we accept that. i think one of the sticking issues is that there is talk about amnesty and say they don't want amnesty and they want

decriminalization and they are not crimels and people fighting for the future new noted ukraine as they say at the moment. >> reporter: u.n. and certasyr calling in the city of homs to return to the negotiating table and say the theatre is death and destruction and meeting the u.s. secretary of state john kerry in geneva, a deal agreed earlier this year and further talks broke down this week after heavy fighting. and these are the latest pictures which are said to show the destruction of homs and they say barrel bombs are being dropped by the government who are trying to target opposition-held areas. and activists in homs say the bombardment is the worst in months and as dana reports rebels in the city say fighters in the north have let them down. >> translator: they are

trapped, weakened by a military siege and now feel abandoned by their partners in this war. rebels and the besieged city of homs are fighting what could be their last battle. >> translator: we won't leave, homs is ours and we will not accept reconciliation deals. >> reporter: these are 1,000 opposition fighters who refuse the government offered to hand themselves in as part of a reconciliation process. for these men they were let down by rebels in other areas. >> translator: why did you forget homs? what happened to the millions of dollars sent to the rebels in the north to break the siege? for god sake unite. >> reporter: the sern government believes it will claim victory in syria's third largest city and forces are on the offensive and they do have the upper hand, the last rebel-held areas are under fight military siege for almost two years and that forced hundreds of fighters to turn themselves in to the syrian government over

resent months. >> translator: what we are witnessing is the result is under the table and there are those in the opposition who are selling the revolution. >> reporter: in the early days of some of the biggest antigovernment demonstrations took place here before fighting tore this city apart and homs has always been known as the capitol of the revolution. losing homs would be a major blow to opposition and it's not just strategic territory along a major cross road between the north and south of the country and effect the morale of opposition who lost supply lines in surrounding regions. and the rebels have stronghold in homs northern country side but they are under siege and leaders say they were also abandoned. >> translator: we tried to lift the siege of homs but we didn't have airplanes and heavy weapons. we tried many times. >> reporter: those who remain inside the old city try to keep

their spirits high but there is a reality. they are left alone to fight the enemy who has exploded the disunity and ranks and i'm with al jazeera. >> people around the world are paying tribute to the colombian and nobel lorate gabrielle garcia marquez and one of the most important litrys of the 20th century and wreaths a laying outside his home in mexico where he died on thursday and he was 87 years old and in his hometown in columbia, people have been holding vigils in gabrielle garcia marquez honor and the entire country will mark his passing for three days. >> translator: as a government and tribute to the memory of gabrielle garcia marquez i have decreed national mourning for three days and gave an order that all public institutions fly

the national flag at half mast as we have colombians also do in their homes. >> reporter: well, we have more on his life and legacy. >> the colombian novelist credited with introduced the world for a genre called magic realism began his career as a journalist and he said that his novels were based on real life experiences, which he insisted were far more extraordinary and bizarre than anything he could invent. his most famous novel 100 years of solitude was translated into more than 30 languages. it is set in a town and loosely based on his birth place. once unknown town that has now become synonymous with the best selling author. >> translator: this is where he used to read when he was young and first read 1001 arabian

knights and didn't know it was a classic book. >> reporter: his novels and short stories which mix the fantastic with the real in a way that brought to life the character and conflict of his continent, won him the nobel prize for literature in 1982. and he was also passionate about politics. he was a committed left and close friend of castro and while he defended the cuban revolution he tried to release political prisoners particularly intellectuals and insisted he was a journalist and sponsored a film school in cuba and the school for journalist in columbia for alternative forms of mass communication and in the last years he was rarely seen in public and advanced age and frail health keeping him whfrom

what he loved best and he will be remembered for being not only the biggest exponent of reallyism but having a fascination with american literature that will long out live him. >> with mass audiences and academic audiences. it may rise and fall over time, but nothing will change the fact that he took more than 20 countries, literature and with a single book, 100 years of solitu solitude essentially created these forces and made it available to the rest of the world. >> reporter: i'm with al jazeera. >> more to come here at al jazeera including the u.n. which calls for more help from the people of the central african p republic and many are running out of food. the government sets up campaign to prevent blindness in the poorest communities. ♪

join us for exclusive, revealing, and surprising talks with the most interesting people of our time. >> everywhere i go there they are wanting to tell dr. jane what their doing... >> the inspirational dr. jane goodall talks to john seganthaller >> i started with a notebook, and a pair of secondhand binoculars. which was all i could afford... >> and reveals the remarkable human nature of chimpanzees. >> they have a dark side, and that made them more like us than i had thought before. talk to al jazeera only on al jazeera america >> these protestors have decided that today they will be arrested >> these people have chased a president from power, they've torn down a state... >> what's clear is that people don't just need protection, they need assistance.

♪ these are the top stories at al jazeera, the principal of a school that had a group of students on the ferry that sank off south korea have been found hanged and a man's body was found near the rescue coordination center on the island. number of people killed has increased to 28. hundreds are still missing. russia and ukraine have come to an agreement to end the crisis in eastern ukraine and u.s. and eu help break the deal which calls for all pro-russian groups

to disarm in return for an amnesty from the government in kiev. the colombian president declared three days of national mourning to mark the death of gabrielle marquez and considered one of the most important literary voices of the 20th century. so the ongoing agony of all the families involved in the capsized and now sunk ferry off the coast of south korea continues and we go live to brown to get the latest because there is disturbing news concerning one of the school principals who obviously was involved with the school trip, that is primarily what it was, wasn't it? >> that's right. it aids another layer of emotion to this tragic story, the fact that the deputy principal of the school, a man of course who would have known many of the children on the boat should now have decided to take his life.

he was with the children on that trip when they left on wednesday to sale down to the island not far away from here. and as i say he was one of those who was rescued. he spent the last few days at a gym which has been turned into a make-shift camp for those families and people who managed to escape the tragedy. but, yes, i think his death will come as a shock to people here. and in other developments the death toll has continued to rise and there are something like 268 children that are still missing, still unaccounted for. the parents of those children are just a few hundred meters away from me here and sitting beside the ramp where the bodies have been brought ashore today and you can imagine how the anxiety levels raise up each time that happens and seeing more of the frustrations today, i watched an altercation between several members and media of mothers accusing the local

journalists of playing down suggestions that people could still be alive and that is the measure of dfende desperation oe who will listen and south korean prosecutors say the third made and officer was on the bridge at the time of the accident and not the captain, that is another development and of course the captain is now being questioned by the police. >> reporter: thank you very much for that with the very latest just as we hear the news, the deputy principal of the school, at which those children attended has been found hanged. and the u.n. security council has been meeting to talk about cases of human rights abuses in north korea, as captain now reports two foreign political prisoners are among those giving evidence. >> reporter: north korea is one of the most closed off and

secret countries in the world and has not stop u.n. from leashing a report accusing north korea of widespread and gross human rights violations. >> if ever there is a call for action at the highest level on human rights, this really is it. >> reporter: the report alleges the police and security forces of north korea have done rape and extermination and he says he was born in a prison camp in 1992 and in escape from camp 14 he describes being forced to watch the execution of his mother and brother. and his testimony is one of the key elements of the u.n. report and in new york for a special meeting with security council and he admits he was rattled before his appearance before the human rights council in geneva. >> translator: i was really nervous and insecure because they informed me there was a

delegation from north korea and i was shaking. but as someone who is going to talk about the human rights issues then i felt very proud and now i really want to talk about it. >> reporter: the u.n. report calls on the security council to refer the issue to the international criminal court but that is unlikely given china has the power to veto such a move and has publically rejected the document and lack of support and cooperation by north korea made it impossible for the u.n. commission to be impartial and objective. >> china is a great country and a great civilization and it must itself be concerned about having at its doorstep a country which not only has nuclear weapons but is also so inherently unstable as to cause such injustice to its own citizens. >> reporter: neither china or russia attended thursday's security council meeting and they are ready to put the past

behind him. >> translator: for when the human rights issues stopped at some point that would be really great. i have strong aspiration to have a new life starting all over. >> reporter: a life he could never have imagined as a political prisoner in his own country. >> reporter: now we can talk to mr. park from the group liberty in north korea and that is a group which is in seoul and works with defectors in the main from north korea and thank you for talking to us at al jazeera. how has this report compiled by michael kirby and his team, how has this enhanced knowledge of what goes on in north korea? >> well, this commission inquiry report has really been most aut tif and highest level report that has ever come out on the north korean human rights issues and it has been a year long well resourced project on how bad

that is and i think it was over 300 page report that came out of it that went into a lot of detail of the cross reference from a lot of witnesses and then with the latest u.n. securities council discussion of this, it's really pointing the severity of the human rights issues at a level that it exists. >> reporter: but with china and russia not even attending the security council meeting, one wonders what can be done and what can change as a result of the work that has gone into the report which you commend for its detail and its authority. >> right, it does seem the chinese government and maybe the russian government as well will block the final referral of this case to the international criminal court. however, even having these kinds of discussions of the security council and forcing the chinese to block that would push up the costs of the chinese

government's basic come policety in the human rights violations against the north korean people especially through north korean refugees which is against the national law they signed up to themselves. >> tell us a little bit about the number of people who managed to escape north korea, the kind of people that you end up dealing with and some of the stories they have to tell. >> right, so there is thousands of korean refugees in the country every year and most of these people have been leaving since the late 1990s, since there was at north korea and 26,000 have made it all the way to south korea and we estimate there is tens of thousands still in china as well and still hiding that and inland both and a lot of the people that we meet and that we help to come through china and southeast asia or the u.s. tell us amazing stories

about what they went through, both the kind of stories the report went through and severity of the charges in terms of prosecution that doesn't have an equal in the rest of the world in terms of how systemic it is and also learned from them how much north korea society is changing and with the modernization and information flows occurring that also provide ways that maybe we can help to empower north korean people to further drive more change inside north korea. >> reporter: thank you very much indeed and thank you so much for your insight into the situation regarding north korea. now to nigeria where the military rejected the claim saying they freed school girls and 100 students were kidnapped from a school in the northeastern state of the border and live to our correspondent who is in the capitol and

confusion about what actually happened, what more do you know? >> well, this confusion seems to be coming from the nigerian military. on wednesday they issued a statement saying 129 girls had been kidnapped and they managed to rescue 121 of them and they had cross checked this figure with the principal of the school who confirmed to them that 121 girls had returned. within hours of the statement from the nigerian military the principal and parents denied the claims and on thursday night the military issued another statement saying, well, if the parents and the school principal is saying the girls have not been found and they remain in captivity and then we don't have the girls. so all of this is being exacerbated by the fact that not only the military has made these claims since the kidnap took place on tuesday there has been no video or photographic

evidence of where the girls may be and we can't go there to independently verify their claims. >> all right thank you very much, and keeping your eye across the story which is clearly ongoing. now we stay on the continent because u.n. says the conflict in central african republic is not getting attention it deserves and they fear thousands of people are not getting food and that is true of the town here where people are trapped and caroline malone reports. >> this is where some hungry women and children get food and butter, the world food program set up operations on what used to be a diamond and gold trading center. but there is not enough for everyone. local health workers say children are dying every few days from malnutrition. >> translator: i go to see and select the children who suffer from malnutrition particularly

severe malnutrition and we find many of them, more than 2-300 but we don't have the products we need to treat the most severe malnutrition. >> reporter: diamond mining, used to provide for christians and muslims here before the fighting between them started and now around 14,000 muslims live surrounded by christian fighters and many people are without enough food and the few supplies that get in are unaffordable. >> translator: everything is blocked. nothing comes in. it's very expensive to buy food and no amount of food that comes in is very expensive and reached a critical stage and seems like we live in the present. >> reporter: christian people of the town have been damaged by the muslim fighters and the attacks removed any chance of a different religious groups doing business together. >> translator: there are miners

there who trade with christians but all christians have becomed antiand muslims don't want to stay here anymore and need to leave. >> reporter: french and african soldiers patrol the area for a buffer between the armed groups and prevent any more violence. but unless thousands of muslims get safe pages out or more food brought in people are threatened by a situation effecting much of central african republic and i'm caroline malone in al jazeera. >> they stepped up the eye disease and we have more. >> reaching out to a community for years has been neglected, they paid don marcos and wife a visit. the 86-year-old farmer is recovering from another eye surgery which prevented him from going blind. he suffers from an infectious

eye disease caused by bacteria. don first developed symptoms when he was a child and remembers having problems seeing the chalkboard when he was at scho school. >> translator: even though my eyes bothered me i couldn't stop my activities. there were no doctors so i tried to find medicine plants to heal my eyes. >> reporter: this is clean running water and don and family only got access to it about 12 years ago after the government helped them to build this water system. lack of clean water is one of the principal reasons why people contract tracoma. these communities, some of the poorest in mexico are the most vulnerable to the disease. poor hygiene and lack of medicine are the main reasons tracoma is still endemic here but ten years ago they tested health workers to target the disease and set up clinics and lived in the communities,

gaining the trust of the people wasn't easy. >> translator: because we represent the government at first people didn't trust us and that was limiting and little by little we gain trust and people started opening doors to us. >> reporter: now the state government says that while the disease still exists it's controlled and caught early enough to stop blindness. but there are new cases. he and his sister were diagnosed last year. educating the negligence generation remains a priority and to truly eradicate it some doctors say the government must change its thinking too. >> translator: the government gives them a place to sleep and watertanks but they are not improving nutrition or providing jobs or increasing the status of women. they do not improve living conditions which produce illness. >> reporter: as for don marcos

he cannot thank the team enough. knowing he won't go blind despite recurrent tracoma he can continue to tend land he has worked for decades, i'm with al jazeera in the highlands. >> reporter: once more on the al jazeera website. >> vladimir putin might be standing strong, but russia's economy might be standing on the brink of recession. and a lot of hype over what come are calling the twitter of china. plus why would anyone ever vote for this guy, rob ford ever again?