September 21st, 2007
Aid flows into Sumatra as tsunami death toll edges toward 150,000
Substantial amounts of aid on Saturday began reaching tsunami victims in remote areas of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island, as the United Nations said the death toll from last weekend’s disaster is approaching 150,000.
Jan Egeland, the U.N. emergency relief coordinator, said he expects the number of dead in Indonesia alone to reach 100,000, based on estimates from U.N. workers in the field, according to CNN.
”We will never have an exact figure because of all the nameless fishermen who are gone,” Egeland said.
”The (overall death toll) may be approaching 150,000 dead. The vast majority of those are in Indonesia and Aceh, which is the least assessed area because of logistical constraints, and it may therefore rise further,” he said.
He predicted that 5 million people ultimately will be affected by the disaster, including 1 million homeless.
Thousands remain missing after a magnitude 9.0 undersea earthquake struck off Sumatra on Sunday, sending giant waves smashing into coastlines from Malaysia to East Africa.
The U.S. aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln arrived at Sumatra, and its military helicopters have set off from for Aceh Province, BBC News reported. The helicopters dropped relief supplies into parts of the hard-hit province virtually cut off from the rest of the world.
The disaster is now known to have killed more than 80,000 people on the northern part of Sumatra, mostly in Aceh.
Supplies had started pouring into the airport at Aceh’s provincial capital Banda Aceh on Friday, but much of it failed to get out to the nearly 110,000 made homeless, Reuters news service reported.
In Banda Aceh, tractors were being used Saturday to extract bodies spreading the smell of death across the city and clear away the rubble of buildings. Hopes remain that more survivors can be found.
People scoured refugee camps looking for loved ones or checked rotting bodies lying on the streets.
In the city’s markets, some traders resumed business, selling what remaining merchandise they had.
India raised its estimate of tsunami fatalities on Saturday to 12,709 dead or feared dead, its second significant upward revision of the day, according to Reuters.
An Indian Home Ministry official said the rise was due to a sharp jump in the number of missing and feared dead in the country’s remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands, from 3,000 to 3,754, according to the report.
In Thailand, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said Saturday that the government will investigate why warnings of the deadly tsunami largely failed to get through to officials and tourist resorts, according to the Associated Press.
Thailand’s death toll from the tsunami disaster was raised Saturday from 4,560 to 4,812, with just more than half of them foreign tourists, the AP said. Another 6,541 were still listed as missing.
In his weekly radio address, Thaksin warned the eventual Thai death toll could be as high as 8,000.
In Sri Lanka, authorities on Saturday put the nationwide tsunami death toll at 28,729.
The AP quoted K. Wijethunga of the National Disaster Management Center as saying that 16,525 people were injured and 5,240 remained missing.
Meanwhile, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi pledged Saturday $500 million in grant aid for the countries badly affected by the Indian Ocean tsunami.
In a statement, Koizumi also said he will participate in a meeting of world leaders Thursday in Jakarta to discuss aid for these countries.
Koizumi is expected to pledge Japan’s help in preventing the spread of infectious diseases in the affected areas in light of a warning issued by the World Health Organization that quake and tsunami sufferers are under threat from diarrhea, malaria and other infectious diseases.
On Friday, U.S. President George W. Bush said he is boosting U.S. aid to help the tsunami victims to $350 million from $35 million.
Bush drew criticism for his handling of the crisis because of his protracted response to the disaster and an initial U.S. pledge of only $15 million in assistance.
Singapore said Saturday it will make available its air force and naval bases for use by the United States, Japan and other foreign countries to ship relief supplies to Sumatra.