Six aftershocks jolted a remote southern Indian archipelago where villagers were fighting yesterday to survive without water or food after Asia's devastating tsunami, officials said.
The 5.2-5.9 magnitude tremors on Friday night and early yesterday came as authorities tried to reach the survivors who are desperate for humanitarian aid. There were no reports of casualties from the new quakes.
India has so far denied international aid groups access to enter most of the island territory of Andaman and Nicobar, the last tsunami blind spot where casualties are not known but feared to be in the thousands.
"There is nothing to eat there. There is no water. In a couple of days, people will start dying of hunger," Anup Ghatak, a utilities contractor from Campbell Bay island, said as he was being evacuated to Port Blair, the capital of the territory.
Yesterday, India raised its official death toll to 8,942 -- a jump of more than 1,100. Most of the deaths, 7,397, have occurred in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. However, that does not include a complete count in the island territories. An island official said Friday that 712 bodies had been buried or cremated there, and at least 3,754 people were missing amid the debris of crumbled homes, downed trees and mounds of dead animals on several islands.
That lowered a government estimate Thursday of 10,000 missing in the hundreds of islands scattered over some 7,000km in the Bay of Bengal. The Red Cross said earlier up to 30,000 could be missing.
Homeless and stunned victims of last Sunday's disaster poured into eight relief camps in Port Blair with harrowing tales of death and destruction. Walking long distances through dense forests to get to the nearest airfield, they were grateful they had survived but eager to learn if their friends and families were safe.
"There is starvation. People haven't had food or water for at least five days. There are carcasses. There will be an epidemic," Manoranjan Bhakta, Andaman's lawmaker to the federal parliament, told reporters after being surrounded on a roadside by people demanding food and water for stranded family members.
Indian authorities have traditionally barred foreigners from most of the islands -- partly for security reasons because of an Indian air force base in Car Nicobar and also to protect a dwindling group of indigenous people. Even Indians need special permits to travel there.
Some 40 percent of the densely forested area is designated as a tribal reserve where indigenous people live; the remaining area is protected for wood cultivation.
A few international relief agencies have begun working in Port Blair -- the territory's capital, where permission is not needed to enter -- but are unable to go deeper into the archipelago's 500 islands.
The missing in Andaman and Nicobar Islands could not be presumed dead because they could have survived in coconut groves that dot the islands, said V.V. Bhat, chief secretary of the islands.
"It's possible that a good number of them might have survived in coconut gardens. Coconuts would have provided sustenance, but we can't hazard a guess," Bhat told reporters. Drinking water shortages have been reported, but local people were making do with eating coconut kernel and drinking coconut water, officials said.
"In the southern parts, people have suffered a lot. There is water scarcity everywhere. We fear an epidemic," said Tarak Banerjee, director of the disaster preparedness unit at the Voluntary Health Association of India.
Many villagers alleged relief was reaching the islands but was hoarded by local officials.
Relief operations on the remote archipelago -- which starts approximately 500km northwest of the quake's epicenter -- have been limited to Indian officials and local volunteers who have struggled to deliver tonnes of rations, clothes, bed sheets, oil, and other items, hampered by lack of transportation to the remote islands.
"We would like to be invited to join the relief effort, and to be part of any helicopter or boat trip to the area," an official with the Paris-based Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) said at a news conference.
International humanitarian group Oxfam also requested entry. But Lieutenant Governor Ram Kapse, administrator of the federally governed territory, said no decision had been made. He said four Indian volunteer groups have been allowed to travel to the islands.
Sharath Babu, head of a group of amateur HAM radio operators, said his colleagues in the worst parts of Car Nicobar island reported "relief is not reaching the people. People are hungry."
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
‘SIGNS OF ESCALATION’: Russian forces have been aiming to capture Ukraine’s eastern Donbas province and have been capturing new villages as they move toward Pokrovsk Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi on Saturday said that Ukraine faced increasing difficulties in its fight against Moscow’s invasion as Russian forces advance and North Korean troops prepare to join the Kremlin’s campaign. Syrskyi, relating comments he made to a top US general, said outnumbered Ukrainian forces faced Russian attacks in key sectors of the more than two-and-a-half-year-old war with Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a nightly address said that Ukraine’s military command was focused on defending around the town of Kurakhove — a target of Russia’s advances along with Pokrovsk, a logistical hub to the north. He decried strikes
China has built a land-based prototype nuclear reactor for a large surface warship, in the clearest sign yet Beijing is advancing toward producing the nation’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, according to a new analysis of satellite imagery and Chinese government documents provided to The Associated Press. There have long been rumors that China is planning to build a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, but the research by the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California is the first to confirm it is working on a nuclear-powered propulsion system for a carrier-sized surface warship. Why is China’s pursuit of nuclear-powered carriers significant? China’s navy is already
RSS