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Thailand begins exhuming tsunami dead
Thailand has started exhuming hundreds of bodies hastily buried in mass graves after the Indian Ocean tsunami in an effort to find out how many are among thousands reported missing, many of them foreign tourists.
In India's Andaman islands, which took the full force of the tsunami just over two weeks ago, floods caused by an unusually high tide on Monday led to panic. Many people fled inland with their belongings, but authorities said there was no cause for alarm.
In Indonesia, aid workers expressed fears that corruption and infrastructural bottlenecks could eat away at the billions of dollars promised for survivors of the most widespread natural disaster in living memory.
Bodies in mass graves in Khao Lak in Thailand were being exhumed and DNA and dental tests conducted in an effort to identify them, officials said.
Thai authorities hastily buried hundreds of bodies after the Dec. 26 tsunami to prevent the spread of disease -- but some were so quickly disposed of that it was not even possible to say if they were Thai or foreign.
About 3,400 people are missing in the country, in addition to the 5,300 officially reported dead. Most of the victims were in beach resorts packed with Western tourists.
"Sometimes we can differ between Asians and Caucasians but in some cases we cannot," said Swedish forensic pathologist Anders Eriksson, who is helping in the process. "Then we have to await DNA samples and dental identification."
At the entrance to one resort at Khao Lak beach, dozens of photographs are pinned to the wall in the hope someone has seen the missing -- a pair of one-year old French twins, a three-year old Austrian girl with orange flowers in her blonde hair.
At least 156,000 people were killed in the earthquake and tsunami -- 104,000 in Indonesia, over 30,000 in Sri Lanka, 15,000 in India and more than 5,000 in Thailand. Deaths were also reported in the Maldives, Myanmar, Bangladesh and several east African nations.
The global response to pleas for help has been unprecedented. Governments and agencies have pledged more than $5.2 billion in aid while companies and individuals have promised $1.8 billion. Formula One champion Michael Schumacher has donated $10 million while a Chinese tycoon gave $1.2 million.
SECOND TSUNAMI
"The government faces a second tsunami of aid," said Luky Djani of Indonesia Corruption Watch, a non-governmental group. "They are deluged by the huge amount of donations and they don't know how to manage and how to deliver it in the right way."
The airport at the devastated town of Banda Aceh, which bore the brunt of the earthquake and the tsunami, is chock-a-block with planes flying in with relief material, drinking water and workers.
In Sri Lanka, consignments of food have rotted at the airport while awaiting clearance. Donations of clothes are mostly lying unused because victims are loath to wear second-hand garments.
But corruption is the biggest worry, especially in Indonesia, which has a poor track record.
"Problems with corruption are so high it is almost inevitable," said Sidney Jones, an Indonesia expert with the International Crisis Group. "There is simply no history in Indonesia of the monitoring mechanism necessary to stop it."
But people were beginning to pick up the pieces of lives, even in devastated Banda Aceh, the Indonesian city which was left in ruins by the disaster.
The government has ordered a clean-up of the streets, which turned into fast-flowing rivers at the height of the disaster, sweeping away vehicles, pieces of wood, electricity poles, roofs and other debris. "The water was just so high, not much useful is really left," said Basri Taher, the owner of a kitchenware shop in the town center that is mostly a sodden mess of mud and rubbish. "This is my first day back here because we were afraid of more waves -- people would yell waves, waves and we would run away," said Taher, wearing a motorbike helmet and a face mask to ward off the stench of decay. In India, sea waters again entered the heart of Port Blair in the Andaman islands at high tide on Monday night, lapping at the doors of homes and shuttered shops. People fled to nearby hillocks and many slept on the pavements on high ground. "We did not sleep last night as the waters crossed the road, and the drain and came right up to our house," said Ram Kumar, a navy sailor who lives in a military housing estate. The waters have since receded but authorities expect high tide on Tuesday night could flood more areas. More than 6,800 people are either dead or presumed to have died when the tsunami slammed into the islands, 750 miles east of the mainland and close to the epicenter off the Indonesian coast. Official said relief work had not been affected by the high tide. |
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