Tsunami aid tops $1 billion

JAKARTA, Indonesia – President Bush on Friday increased the U.S. financial contribution for victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami to $350 million, 10 times the previous pledge toward the emergency effort to funnel food, water and medicine to about 5 million people in South Asia and parts of Africa.

The U.S. contribution, which followed complaints that the Bush administration had not acted more quickly and generously, pushed worldwide government donations to more than $1 billion. Lifesaving aid from dozens of countries, however, was often bottled up in hangars and warehouses far from refugees huddled in makeshift shelters along devastated coastlines in hardest-hit Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand.

The official death toll reached 122,000 people in 12 countries from Indonesia to Somalia that were struck by Sunday’s earthquake and fast-moving tsunami. Jan Egeland, the U.N. emergency relief coordinator, said the toll could be approaching 150,000 throughout the affected area.

Bush, in a statement issued Friday in Crawford, Texas, where he was vacationing, said: “The disaster around the Indian Ocean continues to grow both in size and scope. Our contributions will continue to be revised as the full effects of this terrible tragedy become clear.”

The president said the new funding level was based on “initial findings of American assessment teams on the ground.”

At the United Nations, Secretary General Kofi Annan discussed funding details Friday with Secretary of State Colin Powell. “Things are looking up” on the fund-raising front, Annan said. But he added that the relief operation would require a massive effort. “We’re going to need major logistical support – airplanes, helicopters, and air controllers to assist us (to) move the produce and goods as quickly as possible so that we don’t have bottlenecks.”

Powell said the new commitment would deplete U.S. funds for disaster relief and that the White House would seek additional funding from Congress.

Indonesia’s health minister said the estimate of 80,000 deaths in Aceh province on westernmost Sumatra island could rise to 100,000. Officials in Indonesia and in Sri Lanka, where about 28,000 people were believed killed, said the true death toll probably would never be known. India, with 7,763 confirmed deaths, and Thailand, with 4,560 dead, also reported that thousands of people were still missing.

“Not since the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 have we been hit so hard by the devastating wrath of nature,” President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia said in a grief-stricken New Year’s Eve speech, referring to the volcanic eruption and tsunami that killed 36,000. “We mourn, we cry, and our hearts weep witnessing thousands of those killed left rigid in the streets.”

Indonesia’s minister of state-owned enterprises, Sugiharto, visited the west coast of Sumatra by military helicopter Friday and reported staggering destruction in the region’s two largest cities, Meulaboh and Calang, and the surrounding coastal communities. He said the official tally of 9,200 people killed in the two main western districts was a vast understatement. He reported that at least 80 percent of central Meulaboh had been leveled and that 90 percent of Calang, to the north, had been leveled. The region had a population of about 100,000.

But Sugiharto said that small vendor markets had reopened in Meulaboh and that some food was available. The Indonesian military had dispatched five trucks with provisions on a 16-hour journey over the mountains from a neighboring province to Meulaboh. Two navy vessels with essential supplies were also bound for the city.

The military had begun using helicopters to deliver small amounts of provisions to Calang, which is even more isolated.

At the military air base outside Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh province, Australian and U.S. transport planes flew in emergency food, bottled water and medicine. Workers at the base showed greater urgency than in previous days, unloading the aircraft and dispatching goods by truck to tens of thousands of refugees sheltered in camps, mosques, schools and other public buildings.

Nonetheless, boxes remained piled high in a hangar awaiting distribution.

The U.N. Children’s Fund said it was sending enough medicines, tarpaulins and hygiene kits to Aceh to support 200,000 people. World Vision, an aid group, was establishing 20 children’s centers in Indonesia, including special tents for physical and psychological support.

In Sri Lanka, truck convoys were delivering 5,000 tons of food stockpiled by the United Nations to eastern and northern portions of the island. The shipments, which included rice, wheat flour, lentils and sugar, were intended by Thursday to provide 750,000 people with enough food for two weeks.

The U.N. food program also was airlifting food to Indonesia’s Aceh province and sending food overland to Somalia.

With more than 4,000 people unaccounted for in Sri Lanka, television channels devoted 10 minutes of every hour to reading the names and details of the missing.

The international organization Doctors Without Borders said a charter plane with 40 tons of water, sanitation equipment and medical and surgical material was en route to Sri Lanka. That included three kits capable of setting up hospitals to care for 30,000 people for three months.

In India’s remote Andaman and Nicobar islands, military planes continued to send relief supplies of grains, medicines and water. But it was unclear whether those stranded deep in the thick of the forests were receiving assistance.

“Our planes are regularly taking food, medicines and water to the islands. Helicopters launched from the ships are airdropping food packets and medicines to the remote areas,” Commandant Salil Mehta said in a telephone interview from Port Blair, the capital of the island group. He denied reports of starvation among an island population of about 280,000, saying that military flights were looking for survivors and airlifting food everywhere they could. “Inside the jungles and we cannot see them, then we don’t drop the food,” he said.

Officials at Port Blair said that 712 bodies had been buried or cremated Friday and that at least 3,754 people were missing. The figure is significantly lower than an earlier government estimate that 10,000 were missing.

In Thailand, Suwit Khunkitti, minister for natural resources and environment, appealed for dry ice and refrigerated containers to store thousands of decomposing bodies. The known toll of foreign tourists killed in southern Thailand around Khao Lak beach neared 2,000 alone. But with almost 6,500 people missing overall, the final tally will be higher, officials said.

Nine U.S military C-130 transport craft took off Friday from U Tapao – the Thai base used by U.S. B-52 bombers striking targets in Indochina during the Vietnam War – to rush supplies to the stricken resorts of southern Thailand and to more-distant airfields in Indonesia and Sri Lanka, said a U.S. military spokesman in Bangkok.

The U.S. military is providing significant assistance in addition to Bush’s aid announcement.

Two Navy groups of a dozen vessels – led by the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and the amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard – are headed for the coasts of Indonesia and Sri Lanka with supplies and more than 40 helicopters to help ferry food and medicines.