Mass funerals for thousands in Sri Lanka

MASS funerals of thousands of tsunami victims got underway in Sri Lanka yesterday as volunteers pulled more decomposed corpses from washed out trains, cars and smashed buildings.

The confirmed death toll rose to 12,909 yesterday as burials were carried out along southern coastal areas, with the first in the town of Matara, 160 kilometres south of Colombo.

Mortuaries had no refrigeration to preserve the bodies rapidly piling up.

“By noon we have cleared the corpses because most have decomposed to a point where identification was not possible,” a police official in Matara said by telephone.

As Sri Lanka was putting its dead to rest, president Chandrika Kumaratunga declared December 31 as a day of national mourning and said multi-religion services should be conducted for the victims.

Ms Kumaratunga toured most of the affected areas after her return from London on Monday and released 90 million rupees (€633,000) from state coffers towards relief work.

She estimated that more than 4,000 people were injured.

The Tiger rebels, who run a de facto separate state in parts of the north, mounted an unprecedented relief operation, but their resources were scarce and they appealed for help.

The Sri Lankan government offered their foes whatever assistance was needed.

“We need to forget differences and get on with taking care of the problem,” government minister Susil Premajayantha said.

“We are sending officials and supplies to LTTE-controlled areas as well.”

The rebel-held areas of Thalayadi and Mullaitivu, where the Tigers have their main military bases, had a high number of fatalities.

“From data collected by noon Monday, it is roughly estimated that 772 bodies in Mullaitivu and 600 in Thalayadi were recovered and aid workers continue to search for more bodies that would have been entangled in the debris of buildings in the vicinity,” the LTTE said on its website.

Relief workers in the island’s southern districts of Galle, Matara and Hambantota said they were still finding bodies.

“In some places, entire fishing villages have been washed away and we don’t have any survivors who can give an account of how many would have been there,” said police in Galle.

The main telephone company said several areas of the south had been completely cut off.

The southern wildlife sanctuary of Yala was severely battered with a large number of both local and foreign tourists unaccounted for, police said.

Official figures placed the number of foreigners killed at 73 with another 130 wounded or reported missing. Officials said 250 4WD vehicles had taken tourists to the sanctuary on Sunday, but only 30 returned.

Among the missing was the country’s director general of the securities and exchanges commission.

A rescue team was able to track a group of 36 stranded Britons by monitoring signals of a mobile phone carried by one of the tourists.