Aid begins trickling in as death toll mounts

Aid began trickling through to survivors across the earthquake and tsunami-battered Indian Ocean today, but tons of emergency supplies continued to pile up at some overstretched airports as the death toll continued its inexorable rise.

Indonesia said today that more than 100,000 of its citizens had probably died - sending to disaster death toll soaring to more than 140,000.

More than 120,000 people have been killed. Them multi-million pound international relief effort was making headway, as the first of many C-130 cargo planes and warships reached its destination with tons of blankets, bottled water, plastic sheeting and medicines.

In Sri Lanka, a convoy of five trucks from the UN World Food Program began distributing more than 100 tons of sugar, lentils and rice in the Tamil rebel-controlled north, where more than 80,000 survivors of Sunday’s tsunami were hastily settling into camps.

A Thai navy air base used by US B-52 bombers during the Vietnam War is turning into the hub for the US military-led relief effort for Sri Lanka and India, while a American aircraft carrier battle group from Hong Kong was expected to reach Indonesia’s Sumatra island by Saturday.

The Indian navy also deployed two more ships to Indonesia to help with relief operations, including one converted into a 50-bed hospital with facilities to carry out surgical operation.

“This is an unprecedented global catastrophe and it requires an unprecedented global response,” UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said.

Sunday’s 9.0-magnitude earthquake set off a multitude of tsunamis which crashed into 11 Asian and African nations.

The enormous scale of the effort along with the lack of infrastructure in many areas has UN and other aid officials predicting it would be days or even weeks before relief agencies can begin full-scale operations.

Many were only just beginning their assessments, and witnesses said tons of aid was piling up in airports in the Indonesian cities of Medan and Banda Aceh - some for as long four days. Government officials also accused separatist rebels of shooting at truck convoys delivering aid to Banda Aceh.

Medan is a key distribution point for aid across Sumatra, but has become overstretched because of the massive amount of aid and personnel arriving to support the relief effort.

“It will take at least two weeks for us to have the people and equipment we need here,” said Aigor Lacomba, who works for a consortium of European aid groups.

That time line is not likely to sit well with refugees like Darmidi, who has lived on the streets of Banda Aceh amid dozens of stinking corpses since Sunday.

“How are we going to live?” the 43-year old fisherman asks, as his wife washed their two-year-old son in a bucket. ”We have nothing anymore.”

Aid officials estimated as much as 6 % of Banda Aceh was destroyed by the quake and tsunami.

Western health officials headed to devastated areas across Sri Lanka after officials warned about possible disease outbreaks among the one million people seeking shelter in crowded refugee centres.

“Our biggest battle and fear now is to prevent an epidemic from breaking out,” said Health Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva. “Clean water and sanitation is our main concern.”

In India, thousands went hungry in southern Tamil Nadu state as the country declined foreign aid – excluding UN agencies and nongovernment organisations already working in the region.

India has also not yet approved requests from international aid groups to go deep into the remote Andaman and Nicobar islands, the last tsunami blind spots where casualties are feared in thousands.

India has officially reported 7,368 dead in the earthquake-tsunami disaster but that does not include a complete count in the island territories, where officials estimate as many as 10,000 people could be buried under mud and debris.

In Thailand, US planes have already delivered 1,400 body bags to southern islands, while international rescue and forensic teams fanned out in an effort to find survivors and identify rapidly decomposing corpses.