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Western Child Still Unclaimed In Tsunami Disaster
DOZENS of parents desperate to find their missing children rushed to a Thai hospital yesterday hoping that an unidentified Western toddler was theirs. But all came away disappointed and the blond-haired boy, thought to be about two, spent his second night alone in hospital. It was not clear what had happened to the boy, who was found sitting on a road not far from the town of Khao Lak in Phang-nga province, where waves swept away hundreds of tourists and trapped people inside flooded buildings. A few tourists saw the toddler sitting alone and took him to hospital, said Vilad Mumbansao, a staff member at Phuket Hospital. "He looked bleak when he arrived on Sunday night, with some surface wounds on his face and body," he said. No one has claimed the child. The child was lying in a hospital bed yesterday wearing a red and yellow checked shirt and hooked to a saline drip. He was looking healthier after doctors gave him oxygen for a day. Nurse Jintana Choochai said dozens of foreigners had gone to the hospital to see if the baby was theirs, but his parents were not among them. Hospital staff were trying to determine the nationality of the baby. "He could be Swedish because he was enthusiastic when a man spoke Swedish to him," Mr Vilad said. Meanwhile, Malaysian media reported that a 20-day-old baby sleeping on a mattress survived the tsunamis by floating to safety. The baby, identified only as S. Tulasi, was sleeping in a room behind her father's food stall on Penang's popular Batu Ferringhi beach when the waves hit, Bernama news agency reported. "We were all caught off guard. I was thrown several metres away, but managed to hold on to one of the posts," A. Suppiah, 55, was quoted as saying. His wife, Annal Mary, 40, fought her way through the waters to the room where the baby was sleeping. "Thank God the mattress was floating in about 1.5m of water and my baby was crying," she said. Posted by: God Save The World 2004-12-29 |
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