World leaders get first-hand look at tsunami destruction
World leaders get first-hand look at tsunami destruction
Deutsche Presse Agentur, Banda Aceh, Indonesia/Colombo
World leaders toured countries around the Indian Ocean on Friday, expressing their shock at the "utter destruction" wrought by Asia's killer tsunami and vowing to provide prompt aid to ease the suffering of the disaster's victims.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan set the tone during a visit to Indonesia's Aceh province, which took the full brunt of the Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunami and suffered some of the worst casualties and property damage.
"As we traveled along the western coast (of Sumatra island), I have to admit I have never seen such utter destruction mile after mile, and you wonder where are the people, what happened to them," Annan told journalists.
Meanwhile, local media reported that outbreaks of various diseases have occurred in the dozens of makeshift refugee camps that have sprung up in the battered province.
On Thursday, Annan made an impassioned appeal at an emergency summit in Jakarta for nearly US$1 billion in urgent assistance for millions of survivors threatened by disease.
Annan was the latest international leader to visit the devastated region of Aceh, an Indonesian province on the northern end of the island of Sumatra.
Altogether, more than 150,000 people were believed to have died in 12 Indian Ocean nations.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw visited some of the worst-affected areas of southern Thailand, including the resort island of Phuket, where thousands of European tourists were among the dead, missing and injured.
He said 49 British people were confirmed dead throughout the Indian Ocean region, with another 391 listed as missing.
Thousands more Europeans, particularly Swedes and other Scandinavians, were killed or missing and presumed to have perished while on holiday in southern Thailand.
Search and recovery efforts were winding down in many areas in southern Thailand on Friday, with thousands of people still missing and feared dead.
The government's official death toll stood at 5,291, with another 3,570 listed as missing. Among the bodies that have been counted, 2,568 were identified as Thai nationals, 2,510 foreigners and 213 unknown.
Rescue workers and forensic doctors in the hard-hit Phang Nga province said they believed the numbers of dead and missing to be higher than official tallies, but had no accurate way of estimating them.
"Many local people had taken the bodies of their relatives before we could register them, and we have no idea how many," Dr. Porntip Rojanasunan, deputy director of the Central Institute of Forensic Science, said in the town of Takuapa.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell arrived in Sri Lanka Friday to view firsthand the damage caused by the tsunami, which killed at least 30,615 people and left thousands missing in coastal areas of the country.
Powell traveled to the southern district of Galle, where U.S. marines have been deployed for relief work. Later, he was scheduled to meet with Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga and opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe.
The UN's Annan was also due to arrive in Sri Lanka later in the day to view the devastation, as was World Bank President James Wolfensohn.
South Korean Prime Minister Lee Hae-chan also arrived and was due to visit tsunami-affected areas in the southern Hambantota district on Saturday.
In addition, World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Lee Jong-Wook was due in the country Friday, while German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer will visit over the weekend.
The high profile visits were expected to boost Sri Lanka's relief efforts, which are strongly backed by the international community. More than 45 countries have already sent assistance to help victims of the tragedy, while at least 15 countries have sent medical personnel, relief workers and water purification teams.
Over half-a-million people remained in refugee camps in coastal areas battered by the tsunami, the worst-ever natural disaster to occur in the country. The death toll from the disaster has been slowly rising with the discovery of more bodies from debris being cleared by relief teams.