Tsunami death toll hits 166,320

Tsunami death toll hits 166,320

The Ministry of Health raised the country's death toll from the
Dec. 26 tsunami to 166,320 on Wednesday, pushing the total number
of people killed in the disaster around the region above 225,000.

A Health Ministry statement said the new figure was based on
the latest reports from the provinces of Aceh and North Sumatra,
which were directly in the path of the killer tsunami spawned by
a magnitude 9 earthquake the day after Christmas.

The new figure put the global death toll from the tsunami
disaster at 226,566, although this number continues to rise as
more deaths are reported around the region.

Doti Indrasanto, a director in the ministry's health affairs
department, said the sharp increase came after tens of thousands
of people previously listed as missing were confirmed dead by
officials on the ground.

The Ministry of Health had previously given a figure of 95,000
dead, while the Ministry of Social Affairs had put the death toll
at about 115,000 and said on Tuesday it would stop giving new
updates.

Officials concede that, given the extent of the disaster,
exact numbers for Indonesia's death toll are likely to remain
unclear and perhaps may never be known.

Indrasanto said that Health Ministry statistics had previously
listed 77,000 people as missing. Now the ministry says only 6,245
people are missing.

"We have cross-checked this information and it is correct,"
Indrasanto told Reuters.

The Ministry of Health also said there were about 617,000
refugees in the country because of the tsunami, an increase of
about 12,000 on its previous figure. --Reuters