U.S. Marines come ashore on Sumatra island
U.S. Marines come ashore on Sumatra island
Agencies, Meulaboh, Aceh
Marines zoomed ashore on a high-tech hovercraft carrying tons of food, water and a forklift to help repair this tsunami-wrecked town in Indonesia. In Sri Lanka, they splashed ashore with a bulldozer to repair roads and bridges.
After days of delays, the Marines landed on Monday on either side of the disaster zone - the latest branch of the U.S. military to join its biggest peacetime humanitarian mission.
They arrived in the two areas hardest hit by the Dec. 26 earthquake-tsunami disaster, which are also regions wracked by decades-old civil conflicts that have complicated the U.S. military deployment.
The landing in Indonesia came after several days of intense negotiations between the Marines and the local military, and was conducted on a much smaller scale than originally planned - only about 10 Marines were aboard, most of them crew.
"We're hoping that they will see that this went well, and ask us to come again," said Capt. Michelle Howard, commander of the Navy strike force that brought the Marines from the USS Bonhomme Richard.
Nearly 2,000 Marines are now afloat off the Meulaboh coastline in two amphibious assault ships diverted from duty in Iraq. The ships carry two dozen helicopters, heavy equipment such as bulldozers and forklifts, and tons of food.
In Sydney, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said on Tuesday that Australian troops will not be armed while helping with tsunami relief in neighboring Indonesia's devastated Aceh, because that might put them at greater risk of being shot.
Downer said he was satisfied that Indonesia's military was adequately protecting Australian troops and aid workers.
"If we take a different view that we want to send in a brigade or we want to arm all our troops there, then that is going to create a great deal of ill feeling and hostility and I think make it more likely, not less likely, that somebody could shoot at our troops," Downer told Sydney radio station 2UE.
A Spanish Casa-235 jet left Getafe military airport outside Madrid on Monday bound for Indonesia carrying aid for victims of the Asian tsunami disaster with four more to follow, an AFP photographer on the scene said.
Meanwhile, Russia said on Tuesday it was dispatching additional mobile field hospitals and several teams of anti- epidemic doctors to Asian countries reeling from the effects of tsunamis that hit the Indian Ocean region last month.
Two giant Ilyushin-76 transport planes will deliver mobile hospital equipment and a 50-strong team of health ministry physicians specializing in containment of epidemic diseases to Thailand on Friday, RIA Novosti news agency said, quoting a spokesman for the ministry of emergency situations.