Stench of rotting flesh leads to island's bodies

Even as the people of the isolated Andaman and Nicobar islands told harrowing tales of fending off starvation and hungry crocodiles thrown ashore by the towering tsunami, they vowed today to go back to their tiny islands and start all over again.

“We are broken, but this is not the end of life,” said George Aberdeen, whose village on the remote Car Nicobar island was washed away on Sunday. “We will rebuild our lives. It will be difficult – but the whole family will do it together.”

But just how many villages and families remain is unclear.

According to the International Red Cross, 30,000 people may be missing on the remote island chains south-east of India’s mainland. More than 50 aftershocks have struck since Sunday’s 9.0 magnitude tremor and subsequent tsunamis along the coastlines of 11 Asian nations.

The administrator for the islands, Lt. Gov. Ram Kapse, said some 400 bodies had been cremated or buried and that 3,000 were still missing. On Wednesday, he said at least 10,000 people were believed missing.

“I don’t want to hide anything,” he told reporters when they demanded to know why they were not allowed to travel to the islands to make their own death assessments.

Island authorities have so far barred representatives of international aid groups such as Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders and CARE from going to the islands.

Rescuers today followed the stench of death to find rotting bodies in jungles on the remote territory comprised of more than 500 islands. About 350,000 people live on about 30 of the islands.

Survivors from the islands said they had not eaten for two days and people had to contend with crocodiles that were washed ashore.

“There’s not a single hut which is standing,” said Mohammad Yusef, a 60-year-old fisherman from Tea Top village on Car Nicobar.

Yusef said he and his extended family of 20 walked some 12 miles to a devastated, but functioning airfield where thousands were being evacuated by the air force.

He said there were about 15 small villages on Car Nicobar’s coastline; all were destroyed.

“Everything is gone. Most of the people have gone up to the hills and are afraid to come down,” Yusef said.

But there were few tears or hysterics among the thousands of survivors who were being ferried by boat and helicopter to the capital Port Blair.

“The Nicobarese are very calm people. They have taken this with a tremendous sense of maturity,” said Deputy Inspector-General AN Basudev Rao.

He said finding and disposing of bodies was a “daunting task.”

“The rescue parties are approaching inch by inch,” Rao said. “There is also a lot of stench. From the stench, they are trying to follow the direction to the bodies.”