36 Americans ‘presumed dead,’ thousands missing
WASHINGTON – State Department officials Wednesday more than doubled the number of Americans it said were presumed dead after the Indian Ocean tsunami, but they continued to provide little concrete information about thousands more who are unaccounted for in the wake of the tragedy.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, who is touring devastated areas to bring attention to the crisis and American aid efforts, continued to adopt a more hopeful tone about the ultimate fate of Americans in the region than officials from other nations did.
The State Department said that it has classified 36 Americans as “presumed dead,” up from 16 the day before.
The 16 previously announced American deaths were all confirmed, said Adam Ereli, a department spokesman, while the 20 added Wednesday are presumed dead based on new evidence, including family members who have identified photographs from among scores of pictures authorities have posted of unidentified bodies.
The State Department declined to release any details about Americans who are confirmed or presumed dead, citing privacy concerns.
At a news conference Wednesday in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, one of the most devastated areas, Powell said he expected an unspecified increase in the American death toll, according to a transcript released by the State Department.
But Powell also said, “I’m not of the view that the numbers will be anything like what some of our fellow nations have suffered over the last week.”
Senior State Department officials have said privately for days that they expect the eventual American death toll to include dozens, perhaps hundreds of victims. But Powell and others continue to publicly stress the low count of those confirmed dead.
Several leaders from other nations with large numbers of tourists in the region have taken a different approach, publicly warning their citizens to brace for the worst, given a large number of foreign corpses that remain unidentified in popular tourist destinations, especially in Thailand.
Those leaders include Australian Prime Minister John Howard, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson, who all issued warnings to their respective nations last week.
The State Department also has had difficulty releasing basic details about those Americans who are missing or unaccounted for, including solid estimates.
Officials instead have released the number of “inquiries” they have received from worried friends or family members but have failed to say how many Americans those inquiries were about.
On Wednesday, Ereli told reporters the State Department had received 26,000 inquiries since Dec. 26 but later lowered that figure to 24,000. Of those, he said, there were still 3,500 “welfare-and-whereabouts inquiries that we still have not been able to resolve.”
“I cannot tell you how many – the specific number of individuals we are looking for,” Ereli said Tuesday. “And the reason I can’t tell you is because there’s a – unfortunately, a decided lack of specificity and detail that is required in order to be specific about the precise number of missing Americans.”