The authorities have recovered the body of nine-year-old Saad Al-Otaibi, who was reported missing in last year's floods in Jeddah. The authorities have informed the deceased boy's uncle Mash'hour Al-Otaibi, about recovering the body of his nephew. The authorities had extracted samples from the bodies of the child's parents, who are buried at Al-Harazat Graveyard. The test results showed that the genetic characteristics of the boy's body, which was lying at the forensic medicine morgue, were identical to those of his parents. The corpse will be handed over within the next two days to his relatives in preparation for burial beside his family. The Jeddah floods killed seven people from Al-Otaibi's family. Of the seven, six were identified while the boy's corpse had remained unidentified in the morgue until Monday. The boy's uncle, Mash'hour, was quoted in the Saudi Gazette on Monday, saying that he wanted to sue those responsible for causing the death of his brother and his family. The only survivor of his brother's family is their daughter Assilah, who he says is still haunted by her loss. The identification of Saad now reduces the number of missing in the Jeddah disaster to eight. The authorities had earlier uncovered some cases of forgery from people who had declared their relatives missing because they wanted to get the SR1 million compensation ordered by King Abdullah. The attempts to identify bodies are continuing. A committee consisting of the Ministry of Health, Civil Defense and the police has developed a mechanism for identifying dead bodies, which is done with the help of forensic doctors. Earlier a search team consisting of the National Guard, Civil Defense, armed forces and Frontier Guard recovered corpses and human organs of unknown persons. The criminal evidence team at the Genetic Code Department had carried out DNA tests to identify bodies and took samples from the families of the missing persons to find out if any of the missing relatives were among the corpses. The floods in November killed at least 123 people and destroyed thousands of homes and vehicles.
