Sri Lanka struggles to bury its 15,000 dead

Families of the dead used cooking utensils and even their bare hands to dig graves in the aftermath of a huge tidal wave in Sri Lanka, as rescuers searching through the debris uncovered another 2,480 bodies today, bringing the toll on the tropical island to 15,000.

In Muslim villages in the east of the otherwise Buddhist-dominated island, solemn survivors started to bury the bloated and decomposing bodies. Some, lacking shovels, used forks and their hands to scrape a final resting place for several dozen victims, half of them children.