Battles on to aid tsunami survivors as toll tops 400
By Pat C. Santos and Gerry Baldo 10/30/2010NORTH PAGAI — Indonesia battled Friday to deliver aid to remote islands where a tsunami has killed over 400 people, as bodies lay strewn on beaches and buried in debris days after the wave hit.
Disaster response officials believe the final death toll from the huge wave that pummeled the Mentawai island chain off the west coast of Sumatra Monday could exceed 600, with many victims sucked out to sea as the tsunami receded.
Almost 13,000 people are living in makeshift camps on the islands after their homes were wiped out in the killer wave, which was triggered by a powerful 7.7 mag-nitude earthquake.
Survivors in a village reached by an Agence France Presse (AFP) photographer said as many as 30 of the community’s 100 children had been killed. One man complained they still had not received any assistance from the government.
Elsewhere in the disaster-prone archipelago, the nation’s most active volcano, Mount Merapi, was spewing lava and searing gas, after an eruption on Tuesday killed 34 people..... MORE
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/headlines/20101030hed5.html
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