Corpses pulled from canals as death toll hits 9,400

RESCUE workers pulled corpses from canals and water-logged fields in India yesterday as the government warned the death toll of almost 9,400 from a tsunami that lashed the country’s south would rise further.

Police said 3,000 people were confirmed dead and another 2,000 presumed killed in the remote Andaman and Nicobar islands in the far east, where contact has still not been made with isolated communities of thousands of people.

Hundreds of thousands are homeless. The high number of missing means India’s toll was likely to go much higher, interior minister Shivraj Patil said.