The bodies of two more South Africans have been found in Thailand, bringing the total number of tsunami deaths to seven, the Department of Foreign Affairs said on Monday.
Spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa said the department is working with the families of the victims to arrange when to repatriate the bodies to South Africa.
“I don’t have any more details at the moment,” he said. “We will only know the victims’ gender and where they were from later today [Monday].”
Johannesburg tourist Paul Sender was found dead in Thailand on Sunday.
His brother, Steven, identified 28-year-old Paul’s body at a hospital mortuary on Krabi Island on Sunday morning.
On Sunday, the body of a fifth South African was found. The Foreign Affairs consular office in Thailand indicated that the man’s body had been found on Krabi island.
The bodies of the others were repatriated aboard a mercy flight on Wednesday.
There are still about seven South Africans unaccounted for, most of them in Thailand. The two South Africans feared missing in India had been found, he said.
SA committee to aid tsunami hit countries
The interministerial committee on disaster management will meet in Pretoria on Monday to coordinate South Africa’s relief and assistance effort to countries affected by last week’s tsunami disaster.
Mamoepa said on Sunday the meeting will be led by Minister of Provincial and Local Government Sydney Mufamadi and includes the departments of foreign affairs, health, water affairs and forestry, and social development.
Mamoepa said the committee will consider the Thailand authorities’ request for DNA samples to be sent over to that country to assist in tracing missing South Africans among the bodies of victims.
Countries in South Asia and Africa were hit by killer tidal waves, set off by a massive earthquake west of the Indonesian island of Sumatra measuring 9,0 on the Richter scale. The tsunamis left more than 144Â 000 people dead along the Indian Ocean shorelines.
Mamoepa said South Africa has received “a number of requests for relief assistance, mainly from Indonesia, Maldives and Sri Lanka”.
“Subsequently, a team of senior government officials from these various departments, including the provincial local government, met in Pretoria last week to consider South Africa’s response to the disaster that has struck the affected countries.”
The government has set up a relief-assistance coordinating centre based at the Department of Foreign Affairs in Pretoria, and a number of relief organisations and individuals have indicated their willingness to contribute generously to the relief assistance efforts.
“The response has been phenomenal and indicative of South Africa’s sympathies to the victims of tsunami,” Mamoepa said.
The Department of Foreign Affairs also extended its gratitude to Kallie and Monique Strydom, who paid a courtesy call to the centre on New Year’s Day to lend support to the efforts aimed at tracing missing South Africans.
The two were kidnapped and held for four months in a jungle in the Philippines by a group of Muslim extremists while on holiday four years ago.
“It was a perfect New Year’s gift for staff who have been working round the clock since the tsunami struck in an effort aimed at tracing missing South Africans,” the department said.
Aid begins to reach Aceh
The challenge in Indonesia, the country hardest hit by last Sunday’s tsunami, “is in a class of its own”, the United Nations says. But the UN’s emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, stressed at a press conference that aid efforts are progressing.
“Overall I am more optimistic today than I was yesterday, and especially the day before yesterday, that the global community will be able to face up to this enormous challenge,” Egeland said in New York.
The Indonesian province of Aceh — the land mass nearest the epicentre of the 9,0-magnitude quake — bore the brunt of the disaster.
Indonesian officials said rescuers will soon stop searching for survivors. In Banda Aceh, the provincial capital, the head of Indonesia’s search and rescue team, Lamsar Sipahutar, said the chances of finding anyone alive are “very bleak”.
However, only after hours he spoke, a severely dehydrated Indonesian fisherman was found trapped under his boat.
Annan: Recovery will take years
The UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, said the global relief operation is the biggest the UN has faced to date and the reconstruction process will probably take five to 10 years.
“Because the devastation is enormous, it will require billions of dollars,” Annan said in an interview with a US news show, ABC’s This Week.
Annan is due to visit Indonesia on Thursday, where he will probably issue a planned world appeal for more relief at a Jakarta conference on tsunami aid with world leaders.
The United States Secretary of State, Colin Powell, and President George Bush’s brother, Jeb, the Governor of Florida, head for Thailand and Indonesia later on Monday as part of a US delegation to see the devastation first-hand.
Aid pledges have reached $2-billion, but the UN said it will take days to reach some of the survivors.
The UN’s latest report on the relief operation said further flooding caused by heavy rains in some areas is hampering the relief effort and exacerbating poor sanitary conditions of those displaced.
But the tropical rains also delivered relief to survivors, desperate for clean water to avoid diseases such as cholera that could kill tens of thousands.
As a massive humanitarian gathered momentum in Aceh, separatist rebels in the region accused the government of using the relief effort to bring in more troops. Bakhtiar Abdullah, a spokesperson for the Free Aceh Movement, also said government relief workers were harassing and beating rebel sympathisers.
Rescue teams search for bodies
Despite the devastation, signs of normality began returning to Banda Aceh, the provincial capital. Markets supplying fresh fruits and vegetables, opened for the first time on the edge of the city.
The only local daily newspaper, Serambi Indonesia, which lost dozens of reporters in the disaster, also returned to the newsstands on Sunday.
But rescue teams — aided by a dozen elephants to tow away wrecked vehicles — continued the grim task of removing bodies floating in the main river that runs through Banda Aceh. Indonesian marines waded into the water past beached boats to retrieve bodies.
Local radio and television stations also ran tearful pleas for information from some of the relatives of the 3Â 600 people missing.
Aid convoy arrives in Banda Aceh
The UN refugee agency began a 400-tonne airlift of emergency supplies from Denmark and Dubai for Aceh province alone.
The three-day, six-flight operation will deliver 2Â 000 family-sized tents, 100Â 000 blankets, 20Â 000 plastic sheets, 20Â 000 kitchen sets and 20Â 000 jerry cans — enough materials to shelter 100Â 000 people.
A lack of fuel in Banda Aceh had hindered the aid effort to the city, but a convoy of 38 trucks carrying enough fuel for one month had now arrived in the capital. The arrival of a US aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, now anchored off Aceh, has significantly helped aid operations.
Captain Larry Burt, commander of a helicopter air wing on the carrier, said: “I’ve never seen anything like this. We’ve seen bodies 20 miles [32km] out to sea.”
Sri Lanka: Thousands still missing
In Sri Lanka, which has suffered more than 28Â 000 dead, as many as 50Â 000 servicemen were helping rebuild ravaged houses, schools and shops and distribute food and medicines as aid trucks weaved their way along debris-strewn roads that sometimes led nowhere, having been washed away.
Sri Lanka, which has been wracked by a long insurgency, says more than 5Â 000 people are missing, most of them in rebel-held areas in the north-east, but the Tamil Tiger rebels put the figure at 18Â 000.
In India, where 13Â 000 have died, officials said another 5Â 400 people were missing across the remote Andaman and Nicobar islands. Aid workers said the toll could be much higher because they have been unable to reach the interior of many islands.
Relatives and friends flying to Asia in hope of finding loved ones scoured gruesome photographs of bodies pinned on bulletin boards. More than 7Â 800 foreigners are missing across the region, most of them in Thailand’s beach resorts. — Sapa, AFP, AP, Guardian Unlimited Â