Nigeria, Oct. 13 -- The University of Calabar Teaching Hospital (UCTH), Cross River State, has scheduled a mass burial of unclaimed corpses for 21 October, giving families and individuals who deposited the bodies a final opportunity to identify and retrieve them.

The hospital said the exercise became necessary because some corpses had remained in its mortuary for several years, occupying space needed for its operations.

David Ushie, chairman of the Special Task Force on the Evacuation of Abandoned and Unclaimed Corpses, said the hospital issued a public notice enabling relatives and other interested persons to identify and claim the remains before the deadline.

"The hospital has given relatives and individuals who deposited the corpses...