Death toll in Malaysian storm increases to 127

Death toll in Malaysian storm increases to 127

KOTA KINABALU, Malaysia (Agencies): The death toll yesterday
climbed to 127 after a tropical storm ripped the west cost of
Malaysia's Sabah state in the country's worst natural disaster in
recent years, officials said.

A total of 127 bodies had been recovered as of yesterday
afternoon, 90 of whom had been identified -- 82 of them
Indonesians and eight local Sabahans, hospital authorities said.

Some 70 people remained unaccounted for, police said, road and
telecommunication lines to the affected districts have been
severed, and an estimated 5,000 people have been left homeless.

About 30 injured people who were plucked out of muddy debris
were admitted to the district hospital in the worst hit area of
Keningau, in the remote interior of the state on Borneo island,
hospital officials said.

"It is the worst natural disaster to have hit us," Information
Minister Mohamed Rahmat, who is chairman of Malaysia's national
natural disaster committee, told reporters after taking an aerial
tour of the area.

Keningau is 131 kilometers southwest of Kota Kinabalu, the
capital of Malaysia's eastern state.

The state capital was also strewn with toppled billboards,
debris and submerged vehicles in the aftermath of the storm.

In Kuala Lumpur, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad yesterday
promised to help the victims and "take all appropriate actions."
Mahathir, in a statement from the northern island resort of
Langkawi where he is spending a year-end vacation, said he was
shocked and saddened at the loss of more than 100 lives in the
storm and extended his condolences to the families of the
victims.

Meanwhile, Sabah police said a rescue team comprising 230
military and civilian personnel was continuing an intense search
operation in four army helicopters, assisted on the ground by the
navy, police and civil defense personnel.

Among the rescuers are 24 members of the so-called Special
Malaysian Disaster Assistance and Rescue team (SMART), specially
flown from Kuala Lumpur to Keningau yesterday to assist in the
operations.

The team was formed in 1994 following the collapse of a
highland condominium that killed 48 people, including 11
foreigners.

The team members, trained abroad in tunneling and using
tracker dogs, were deployed by helicopter to Keningau.

The small logging town was the worst hit by the storm with 102
bodies pulled from fallen branches, along riverbanks and the
debris of their collapsed homes.

Other victims were found in the neighboring towns of Papar,
Tuaran and Kota Kinabalu.

"We believe that about 200 to 220 were hit when the storm
struck a total of 524 mostly wooden houses in Keningau, Tuaran
and outskirts of Kota Kinabalu," a police spokesman from the
operations room monitoring the tragedy said.

Police believe most of the victims are local indigenous Muruts
and Dusuns, Indonesians and Filipinos.

Although the storm had abated, the weather remained gloomy.
Low-lying districts were yesterday directed to be on the alert as
several small rivers in the interior were still rising.

Sabah meteorological department director Chang Kung Chew said
that Thursday's storm was the worst to have pounded Sabah, going
by the department's available records.

The danger posed by the storm is considered largely over, but
coastal villages still face the threat of flooding as nearby
rivers continue to rise, officials said.

Sabah chief minister Yong Teck Lee, who inspected the scene of
the tragedy in a helicopter late Thursday, directed civil defense
personnel and the state as well as district natural disaster
committees to be activated to help in emergency relief.

Sabah has a population of 1.1 million, made up of numerous
ethnic groups and roughly 70 percent of its mountainous surface
is covered in forest. Its economy is based on its rich natural
resources.