Tsunami death toll exceeds 55,000, disease could double toll
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (AP) - The confirmed deaths in a mammoth Asian quake and tsunami soared above 55,000 on Wednesday as worst-hit Indonesia readied bulldozers to dig mass graves for corpses in a rush to ward off disease, which the U.N. health agency said could double the toll.
Tens of thousands of people were still missing across a dozen countries from Indonesia to Sri Lanka to Somalia, and the millions of people whose homes were swept away or wrecked by raging walls of water Sunday struggled to find shelter.
"My mother, no word! My sisters, brothers, aunt, uncle, grandmother, no word!'' yelled a woman at a makeshift morgue in Lhokseumawe, Indonesia.
"Where are they? Where are they? I don't know where to start looking.''
Indonesia's Health Ministry said thousands more bodies were found, raising to more than 27,000 the number of confirmed deaths on Sumatra island, the territory closest to the quake that sent tsunami waves rolling across the Indian Ocean.
The count did not include a report of 10,000 more dead around one coastal city.
"We will start digging the mass graves today,'' Indonesian military Col. Achmad Yani Busaki said in the Sumatran city of Banda Aceh as bulldozers stood at the ready.
With the threat of disease looming and little way of identifying the thousands of bodies lining the city's streets and the lawns of government offices, the army had no choice but to get the corpses under ground, he said.
Sri Lanka on Wednesday listed 21,715 people dead, India 4,400 and Thailand 1,500, with the toll expected to rise.
A total of more than 300 were killed in Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Somalia, Tanzania, Seychelles and Kenya.
Aid groups struggled to mount what they described as the largest relief operation the world has ever seen, and to head off the threat of cholera and malaria epidemics that could break out where water supplies are polluted with bodies and debris.
Dr. David Nabarro, head of crisis operations for the World Health Organization, warned that disease could take as many lives as Sunday's devastation.
"The initial terror associated with the tsunamis and the earthquake itself may be dwarfed by the longer term suffering of the affected communities,'' he told reporters at the U.N. agency's offices in Geneva.
Along India's southeastern coast, hospital teams stood by to help the injured, but three days after the disaster still spent most of their time tabulating the dead as ambulances hauled in more bodies.
A French cultural center in Thailand's capital provided clothes and food for tourist families left with nothing when the sea battered southern beach resorts.
The world's biggest reinsurer, Germany's Munich Re, estimated the damage to buildings and foundations in the affected regions would be at least euro10 billion (US$13.6 billion).
One of the most dramatic illustrations of nature's force came to light when reporters reached the scene of a Sri Lankan train carrying beachgoers that was swept into a marsh by a wall of water Sunday, killing at least 802.
Eight rust-colored cars lay in deep pools of water in a ravaged palm grove, torn off wheels and baggage scattered among the twisted rails.
In Indonesia, television footage from overflights of Sumatra's west coast showed thousands of homes underwater.
Refugees fleeing the coast described surviving on little more than coconuts before reaching Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh province on Sumatra's northern tip, which itself was largely flattened by the quake.
"The sea was full of bodies,'' said one refugee, Sukardi Kasdi, who sailed a small boat to Banda Aceh to seek help for his family, whom he said had nothing to eat but coconuts.
"I don't know how long everyone else will survive.''
With aid not arriving quick enough, desperate people in towns across Aceh were stealing whatever food they could find, officials said.
The United States, Japan, Australia and other nations pledged millions of dollars to help the relief effort, and some sent military transport planes and helicopters to carry medical teams and emergency supplies.
In southern Thailand's Phang Nga province, where resorts had been packed with thousands of tourists from Europe and elsewhere when the tsunami hit, soldiers and volunteers were still finding bodies lying bloated and rotting in the tropical sun.
Survivors lined up at airports to leave the country, many without relatives or lovers they had come with.
"I saw many kids perish. I saw parents trying to hold them but it was impossible. It was hell,'' said Karl Kalteka of Munich, Germany, who lost his girlfriend in the torrent. - AP
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