Indonesian death toll rises above 32,000 as more bodies found

The military was preparing to dig mass graves today on Indonesia’s battered Sumatra Island, where the government said the official death toll from an earthquake and tsunamis had reached more than 32,000.

Food shortages and disease, meanwhile, in the capital of Aceh province on Sumatra’s northern tip posed looming threats as government officials expressed concerns that aid was not reaching the quake-devastated city of Banda Aceh fast enough.

Purnomo Sidik, national disaster director at the Social Affairs Ministry, said the death toll on the island was 32,490, but that figure did not include data from districts on the west coast, including the town of Meulaboh.

Sidik estimated that 10,000 of its 40,000 residents had died.

Earlier in the day, Vice President Jusuf Kalla told reporters in Jakarta that he expected Indonesia’s official death toll to sharply increase.

“The number of victims could go as high as 40,000, because many of the regions along the western coast of Sumatra cannot be reached,” he said, adding that as many as 500,000 were injured in the disaster.

Bulldozers stood ready to bury the thousands of dead bodies that littered the streets and lined the front lawns of government offices in Banda Aceh. With the threat of disease on the rise and few ways to identify the dead, officials said they had no choice to but start burying them in mass graves, said military Col. Achmad Yani Basuki.

“We will start digging the mass graves today,” he said.

Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin another military spokesman, said that naval ships today headed for the west coast with tons of food, water and medicine. He also said the convoy would include a portable hospital.

“This is first time we are able to send help there,” Sjamsoeddin said. “We have very sketchy information about how many died there and the extent of the devastation. We’re having extraordinary problems communicating there.”

Rescue teams have yet to visit large parts of Aceh, especially along its western coast. But today, nearly 100 doctors began arriving in Banda Aceh and said they would be setting up four hospitals across the province.

“We can only reach a quarter of the western coast,” said Dr. Doti Indrasanto. “The military tried to push through with heavy machinery but they couldn’t. “We’ve got piles of food and medicine and we can’t get it through to these places.”

The quake and tsunami has devastated much of the province’s infrastructure, and distribution of supplies to its 4.3 million people will be difficult, foreign aid workers warned.

Aceh has been wracked by a separatist war for the past 26 years, and Jakarta had banned foreign journalists and international aid agency representatives from visiting the region. But on Monday the government lifted the ban, and said it would welcome aid.