Nine More Tsunami Survivors Found

Men, Women, Girls From Nicobarese Tribes Were Lost In Remote Forest

(CBS/AP)  Nine men, women and teenagers were discovered by police on Wednesday in India's remote Campbell Bay island, after spending 38 days wandering across villages flattened by the Asian tsunami, an officer said.

The nine from the Nicobarese tribe — five males, two women and two teenage girls — are the newest survivors in Asia's devastating Dec. 26 tsunamis.

"They were sitting in the forest when we saw them, and they just ran to us, without saying anything," Inspector Shaukat Hussain told The Associated Press by telephone from Campbell Bay, the only town in Great Nicobar, India's southernmost island.

In other developments:

Bureaucratic bungling has blocked food, medicine and other necessities from reaching a stunning 70 percent of the 1 million Sri Lankans left destitute by the Asian tsunami disaster, a government official said Wednesday, as hungry and homeless survivors protested the lack of help.

Lloyd's of London, the world's largest insurance company, said Wednesday it expects to pay about $188 million in claims related to Asia's tsunami. It called its exposure to the catastrophe "limited." Few people in poor hard-hit countries such as Indonesia and Sri Lanka had insurance. Most claims are thought to concern property damage and business interruption.

A Sri Lankan couple claiming to be the parents of a tsunami survivor known as "Baby 81" have been freed on bail. They were arrested for storming a hospital demanding to see the child, after a court ordered DNA testing to determine if they really are the parents.

Hussain led a police team to look for bodies on Campbell Bay island, which landed at the southernmost tip island and began to trek into the hinterland. Eight miles inside, the survivors were spotted, he said.

The tribespeople — aged 65 to 11 years — were all residents of the island's Pillowbhabhi village on the western coast.

"When the tsunami came, they had climbed on to a hill. They kept walking, they got lost, and were wandering in the forest, resting, then walking again," Hussain said. "They traveled from the western side of the island to the eastern side, until we saved them."

The overall tsunami death toll Wednesday ranged from about 158,000 to 178,000 across 11 nations hit by the disaster, reflecting separate agency tolls in Indonesia and Sri Lanka. With estimates of up to 142,000 missing, more than a quarter-million people may have been lost.

At least 10,749 people were killed by the tsunami in India, and at least 5,640 are missing, most of them on the remote Andaman and Nicobar archipelago where the island is located.

Thilak Ranavirajah, chief of Sri Lanka's presidential task force to coordinate relief, said bureaucratic incompetence and ignorance of tsunami survivors had considerably slowed aid delivery, estimating that relief had reached only 30 percent of those who need it.

"This is not satisfactory," Ranavirajah said. "The president directed me to see that all families, or at least 70 percent to 75 percent of them, get relief by this weekend."

Hundreds of men, women and children rallied outside the U.N. World Food Program office in the capital Colombo on Wednesday, complaining they had not received food rations. Demonstrators from the southern coastal town of Matara submitted a petition seeking U.N. intervention.

It wasn't the first sign of troubles with Sri Lanka's aid effort. The government on Tuesday began investigating complaints that food aid intended for tsunami victims in eastern Batticaloa had disappeared and that some of the homeless living in camps were being fed rotten supplies.

The WFP said they were baffled, saying the organization had donated 10,000 metric tons of rice, lentils, sugar and helped deliver them to government stores island-wide.

"Food has already been sent, we can't understand why the people aren't getting it," said Selvi Sachithanandam, a WFP spokeswoman.

The infant is known as "Baby 81" because he was the 81st patient admitted to this hospital in Sri Lanka. At first, nine women claimed him, reports CBS News Correspondent Barry Petersen. Now only one couple is fighting for Baby 81.

"I can't take him home," said Jenita Jeyarajah, who claims to be his mother. "I feel really sad."

When the court did not give the couple custody, the distraught man who claims to be the father threatened to kill himself. Then the couple then raced to the hospital, still hoping to get the child. But they may have to wait weeks for the DNA test results.

Doctors say Baby 81 symbolizes the grief of those whose children were swept away in the tsunami, sometimes wrenched from a mother's desperate arms by the sheer force of the water, and the hope of those who still believe their baby somehow survived — and that Baby 81 is that child.

"But these parents are coming always, coming and asking that this child is ours, ours, ours," said Dr. Kumuduni Thurairathnam, the hospital superintendent.

But maybe Baby 81 is among the fortunate, reports Petersen. Many children lost one or both parents. Baby 81 may soon be reunited with his family — once the court knows for sure who his family really is.


©MMV, The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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