Aftershock Rattles Relief Efforts

Relief workers and tsunami survivors got another unwelcome reminder of the power of nature Thursday, as a 6.2-magnitude aftershock shook tsunami-stricken Banda Aceh, Indonesia early Thursday - panicking some residents and sending them running into the streets, fearing their homes might collapse.

The temblor sent grinding noises through the USS Abraham Lincoln, just offshore. GIs and others involved in the relief effort also felt an earlier, only slightly less powerful aftershock: 5.6-magnitude, on Wednesday night.

The first patients turning up at hospitals and makeshift clinics in Indonesia's hard-hit Aceh province after the disaster had mostly scrapes, bruises and broken bones.

Now doctors say they are treating potentially deadly infections that are sneaking into superficial wounds, said Dr. Ronald Waldman, who is coordinating WHO efforts in Indonesia.

Four of the nine patients who went through surgery at the Banda Aceh military hospital on Wednesday had legs amputated because of infections, the New York Times reports.

Pneumonia has also emerged as a significant illness, caused by exposure to dirty water during the tsunami.

But the number of cases of children with severe diarrhea is still low, and the cases are not thought to be due to the germs that cause cholera or other illnesses that could explode into epidemics, Waldman said.

"Five million people have been severely affected by the tsunamis," said WHO Director-General Dr. Lee Jong-wook. "We now estimate that as many as 150,000 people are at extreme risk if a major disease outbreak in the affected areas occurs."

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan urged world leaders at an international tsunami aid conference in Jakarta to immediately come forward with $1 billion of the nearly $4 billion in aid they've promised.

The United Nations has warned some of the promises might not be honored, as has happened in the past.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said the four-nation coordination between the United States, Australia, India and Japan announced by President Bush was now being disbanded and instead folded into the broader U.N. effort, reports CBS News Correspondent Lee Cowan.

Individual donations are making a big difference in the private aid collected in the United States. American Red Cross president Marty Evans tells CBS Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith that individuals gave 60 percent of the roughly $100 million raised so far. The rest is from corporations.

In the past six days, at least four shootings have prevented aid workers from helping hundreds of refugees who have walked for days or are arriving by boat from other parts of Aceh's western coast, said Sgt. Muhammad Guntur of Indonesia's elite Kopassus forces.

Guntur accused rebels from the Free Aceh Movement of disrupting the distribution of much-needed aid to several hundred thousand homeless.

An Associated Press reporter witnessed one incident of gunfire on a relief camp in Lhoknga.

In another possible danger to aid workers, some radical Islamic groups are sending men into Aceh - perhaps to stir up sentiment against U.S. and Australian troops there, a terrorism expert said.

"They appear to see their role not only as helping victims but as guarding against 'kafir' - infidel - influence," said Sidney Jones, Southeast Asia project director for the International Crisis Group.

U.S. officials are tracking down 2,600 Americans who have been reported missing in the wake of the Dec. 26 tsunami, Ambassador Maura Harty told CBS News Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm.

She said there are 18 presumed American deaths between Thailand and Sri Lanka. A high ranking state department official speaking on the condition of confidentiality put that figure at 36 on Wednesday.

Harty said that at one point officials were investigating 12,000 inquiries on U.S. citizens. She says airlines, Thai officials and the Department of Homeland Security have all been cooperating to whittle that number down. Harty also requested that people who opened inquiries call the State Department if they hear news of a loved one.

Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., a medical doctor and Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-Louisiana, visited tsunami-stricken southern Sri Lanka on Thursday, tying up two of the five U.S. Military helicopters presently available, reports CBS News Correspondent Allen Pizzey.

Relief efforts in Sri Lanka are focused on areas still cut off by both the tsunami and monsoon rains. The anticipated arrival of more U.S. helicopters and the Marines will do much to help get much need aid where it is needed the most, reports Pizzey.

A group of homeless men at the camp expressed frustration with government-led relief efforts, complaining that the local Red Cross had only set up their clinic, complete with flags and banners, a few hours before the U.S. senators visited. Red Cross officials said their mobile clinics were treating patients at hundreds of camps.

Just before his helicopter lifted off, Frist and aides took snapshots of each other near a pile of tsunami debris.

"Get some devastation in the back," Frist told a photographer.

In Thailand, on ravaged Patong Beach, tourists and local residents have lined up in traffic jams, pulled out their video cameras and traveled from leveled building to building, fascinated by the chance to see first hand what nature has wrought.

"It's quite interesting really," said British tourist Mark Watts, 40, from Bristol, England. "In America or England, this whole area would have been declared a disaster zone. It would have been cordoned off with military everywhere."

Soon after the tsunami hit Dec. 26 — killing more than 5,000 in Thailand alone — thousands poured into the streets to watch the cleanup effort.

People steered their motorbikes with one hand, camcorder in the other, snaking through streets with bloated bodies, cars stacked up, and buses overturned in ponds formed by waves.

In some areas around Khao Lak, hundreds of villagers came out of their homes to watch volunteers drag bodies out of newly formed saltwater lakes.