Tidal wave kills hundreds of Somalis

HUNDREDS of Somalis died and entire villages and towns disappeared when tidal waves hit the East African nation’s coastline after travelling 2,800 miles across the Indian Ocean.

The waves were triggered by the 9.0-magnitude undersea quake centred off the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

The “human loss is in the hundreds in the central and north-eastern coastal area. Entire villages and coastal town have been swept away by the tidal waves and there is severe damage to property,” said Yusuf Ismail, spokesman of Somalia’s President Abduallhi Yusuf Ahmed.

The spokesman is based in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, where the Somali parliament is based because the Somali capital is considered too dangerous.

He said he could not give an exact figure of the number dead because “we’re focussing on extending our limited relief to the badly affected people.” Ismail said the worst affected coastlines were along the semi-autonomous north-eastern region of Puntland and the central regions of Mudug and Upper Shabelle.

“All of the fishermen who went to sea haven’t come back,” Ismail said. “We make an urgent and important appeal to the international community for immediate relief supplies.”

In some parts of Somalia, waves travelled two miles inland, along riverbeds, said Umar Haji Ali, a fisherman in Kabaal, 500 miles from the capital, Mogadishu.

In the capital, the ocean rose six feet when the waves hit. There were no reports of deaths in Mogadishu.

Somalia has been split among clan-based militias since dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted in 1991. More than 500,000 people have died in the conflict since Barre’s fall and two million have been driven from their homes, 1.5 million of them refugees in neighbouring countries.

Meanwhile, the tsunami that swept across the Indian Ocean barely noticed the Maldives, tearing through the collection of low-lying atolls - submerging some of them completely for several minutes - dragging tourists from their hotel rooms and swimmers out to sea.

At least 43 people were confirmed dead and 63 reported missing in the popular tourist destination yesterday, the government said. President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom declared a state of emergency.

Tourists described three-feet-high walls of water sweeping across their resort islands and into their bedrooms, with powerful currents dragging swimmers out to sea.

Mike Rigg, a33, a construction worker from the Wirral near Liverpool, was surfing at the resort of Lohifushi when the tsunami hit. He said there was a six-feet-high surge in the waves and he was dragged along the edge of a powerful current, though he managed to stay out of the worst of it.