|
Toll in Asian tsunamis above 24,000
The death toll in the tsunamis that ripped across Southeast and South Asia climbed above 24,000 on Tuesday as emergency and government officials said two days after the disaster that they feared the number of victims would increase sharply. Bodies continued to wash ashore as thousands of people were missing - washed out to sea, buried in rubble or trapped in submerged buildings. Hundreds of thousands were left homeless, and coastlines left desolate. "We have to assume that thousands of people who are missing are dead," U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland told reporters in New York. The cleanup was well under way, and international relief efforts began as disease threatened the areas devastated in Sunday's disaster.Egeland said millions of people would be affected in the "second wave" of the tsunamis, meaning disease outbreaks and lack of necessities after the disaster. "Drinking water for millions has been polluted," he said Monday at U.N. headquarters in New York. "Disease will be a result of that, and also acute respiratory disease always comes in the wake of disasters." Regional governments and businesses were still coming to grips with the extent of the devastation, triggered by an undersea earthquake off the northern tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. The magnitude-9 quake, the world's biggest in 40 years, spawned ferocious waves that caused deaths as far away as Somalia and caused water levels to rise as far away as San Diego, California. The tsunami produced waves as high as 6 metres, and their force was so strong that one tourist couple in Sri Lanka who were tumbled in the tsunami were stripped naked. They survived, penniless, but by the goodness of Sri Lankans, had clothes to travel to an airport to try to fly home. The hardest-hit areas were poor fishing villages on the coasts of southern India and Sri Lanka in a disaster the United Nations called "a catastrophe without precedent". More than 12,000 were dead in Sri Lanka, and the toll in India neared 7,000. Deaths were also recorded in Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar (Burma), Malaysia, the Maldives, Bangladesh and Somalia. At least a third of the dead were children. Posted by: Steve White 2004-12-28 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=52312 |