Rain and flooding hinder Asia's tsunami relief effort

Rain and flooding hinder Asia's tsunami relief effort

Michael Perry, Reuters/Bangkok

Heavy rains and fresh floods disrupted aid to Asia's tsunami-hit villages on Sunday as the United Nations refugee agency started a 400-tonne airlift as part of a US$2 billion relief operation to save millions struggling to survive.

Tropical rains in Indonesia's northern Aceh province, with more than half of the 127,000 known dead, and flooding along Sri Lanka's low-lying coast halted some aid deliveries. Rescuers were already struggling to cope with the logistical nightmare of reaching devastated villages cut off from the world.

"Further flooding caused by heavy rains in some areas is hampering the relief effort and exacerbating poor sanitary conditions of those displaced," the United Nations said in its latest report on the tsunami relief operation.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR began a 400-tonne airlift of emergency supplies from Denmark and Dubai on Sunday bound for grief-stricken Aceh alone.

The three-day, six-flight operation will deliver 2,000 family- sized tents, 100,000 blankets, 20,000 plastic sheets, 20,000 kitchen sets and 20,000 jerry cans -- enough materials to shelter 100,000 people.

"Getting roofs over these people's heads is a top priority," said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers. "They are traumatized, living in surroundings that now can only be described as sheer hell."

But one week after the tsunami waves crashed ashore around the Indian Ocean and as aid was reaching survivors, relief organizations were still trying to come to grips with the sheer enormity of a humanitarian operation that spans six nations.

Asian airports were groaning under the weight of hundreds of flights carrying medicines, food and shelter and warehouses were filling so quickly that Singapore, which was unaffected by the tsunami, opened its military bases to storing aid.

In Sri Lanka as many as 50,000 servicemen were helping rebuild ravaged houses, schools and shops and distribute food and medicines as aid trucks weaved their way along debris-strewn, pot-holed roads which sometimes led nowhere, simply washed away.

But as aid reaches survivors, the World Health Organization said disease outbreaks were likely due to contaminated water supplies and the destruction of many hospitals.

More than 100,000 people are living in temporary shelters and camps in Indonesia, and the United Nations said many were suffering diarrhoea, fevers, skin irritations, respiratory infections, headaches and stomach problems.

There was a desperate need for at least 20,000 emergency latrines and family-size tents, it said.

In Sri Lanka tens of thousands were living in camps and there too survivors suffered diarrhoea and vomiting from contaminated water, the first signs of potentially deadly diseases.

The United Nations children's agency UNICEF has delivered 15 emergency medical kits to Sri Lanka which will allow 15 battered hospitals to treat some 150,000 for three months.

"In the immediate term, there are concerns that the death toll will increase in the absence of adequate relief efforts," said the United Nations.

Meanwhile, Indian officials said on Sunday in Port Blair that thousands of Andaman and Nicobar islanders are missing, feared killed by last week's deadly tsunami, but few bodies have been located so far.

Only about three dozen of the more than 550 islands in the group, a strategic military zone, are inhabited. Several are home to primitive tribes including some who subsist on hunting with spears, bows and arrows and on fishing and gathering fruit and roots. The fate of many of the tribals is unknown.

A top Home Ministry official expressed concern about the endangered Shompen tribe who live in the badly hit southernmost island of Great Nicobar.

"We have no news of them. No news," A.K Rastogi told a news conference in New Delhi late on Saturday. The Shompens number close to 400.

Officials said 5,400 people were missing across the island group, most of them feared dead. Aid workers said the death toll could be much higher because they had so far been unable to reach the interior of many islands.

The head of the Indian army, General N.C.Vij, said the civil administration had told him there could be more than 1,000 bodies scattered across Car Nicobar island, which bore the brunt of the huge waves, but barely 120 had been disposed of so far.

"The momentum is picking up slowly, there are difficulties, bodies have to be spotted, identified," Vij told reporters.

Local officials said tempers among residents in some of the islands were rising because no relief had yet reached them.