Six aftershocks jolted a remote southern Indian archipelago where villagers were fighting yesterday to survive without water or food after Asia's devastating tsunami, officials said.
The 5.2-5.9 magnitude tremors on Friday night and early yesterday came as authorities tried to reach the survivors who are desperate for humanitarian aid. There were no reports of casualties from the new quakes.
India has so far denied international aid groups access to enter most of the island territory of Andaman and Nicobar, the last tsunami blind spot where casualties are not known but feared to be in the thousands.
"There is nothing to eat there. There is no water. In a couple of days, people will start dying of hunger," Anup Ghatak, a utilities contractor from Campbell Bay island, said as he was being evacuated to Port Blair, the capital of the territory.
Yesterday, India raised its official death toll to 8,942 -- a jump of more than 1,100. Most of the deaths, 7,397, have occurred in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. However, that does not include a complete count in the island territories. An island official said Friday that 712 bodies had been buried or cremated there, and at least 3,754 people were missing amid the debris of crumbled homes, downed trees and mounds of dead animals on several islands.
That lowered a government estimate Thursday of 10,000 missing in the hundreds of islands scattered over some 7,000km in the Bay of Bengal. The Red Cross said earlier up to 30,000 could be missing.
Homeless and stunned victims of last Sunday's disaster poured into eight relief camps in Port Blair with harrowing tales of death and destruction. Walking long distances through dense forests to get to the nearest airfield, they were grateful they had survived but eager to learn if their friends and families were safe.
"There is starvation. People haven't had food or water for at least five days. There are carcasses. There will be an epidemic," Manoranjan Bhakta, Andaman's lawmaker to the federal parliament, told reporters after being surrounded on a roadside by people demanding food and water for stranded family members.
Indian authorities have traditionally barred foreigners from most of the islands -- partly for security reasons because of an Indian air force base in Car Nicobar and also to protect a dwindling group of indigenous people. Even Indians need special permits to travel there.
Some 40 percent of the densely forested area is designated as a tribal reserve where indigenous people live; the remaining area is protected for wood cultivation.
A few international relief agencies have begun working in Port Blair -- the territory's capital, where permission is not needed to enter -- but are unable to go deeper into the archipelago's 500 islands.
The missing in Andaman and Nicobar Islands could not be presumed dead because they could have survived in coconut groves that dot the islands, said V.V. Bhat, chief secretary of the islands.
"It's possible that a good number of them might have survived in coconut gardens. Coconuts would have provided sustenance, but we can't hazard a guess," Bhat told reporters. Drinking water shortages have been reported, but local people were making do with eating coconut kernel and drinking coconut water, officials said.
"In the southern parts, people have suffered a lot. There is water scarcity everywhere. We fear an epidemic," said Tarak Banerjee, director of the disaster preparedness unit at the Voluntary Health Association of India.
Many villagers alleged relief was reaching the islands but was hoarded by local officials.
Relief operations on the remote archipelago -- which starts approximately 500km northwest of the quake's epicenter -- have been limited to Indian officials and local volunteers who have struggled to deliver tonnes of rations, clothes, bed sheets, oil, and other items, hampered by lack of transportation to the remote islands.
"We would like to be invited to join the relief effort, and to be part of any helicopter or boat trip to the area," an official with the Paris-based Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) said at a news conference.
International humanitarian group Oxfam also requested entry. But Lieutenant Governor Ram Kapse, administrator of the federally governed territory, said no decision had been made. He said four Indian volunteer groups have been allowed to travel to the islands.
Sharath Babu, head of a group of amateur HAM radio operators, said his colleagues in the worst parts of Car Nicobar island reported "relief is not reaching the people. People are hungry."
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
Former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a Peruvian presidential hopeful, gathered hundreds of supporters in Lima on Tuesday and gave authorities 24 hours to annul the first round of the country’s election over allegations of fraud. Lopez Aliaga is locked in a tight three-way race with two other candidates for second place in Sunday’s vote. The election runner-up wins a ticket to June’s presidential run-off against front-runner Keiko Fujimori. “I am giving them 24 hours to declare this electoral fraud null and void,” said Lopez Aliaga, surrounded by a crowd of several hundred supporters. “If it is not declared null and void tomorrow,
Four contenders are squaring up to succeed Antonio Guterres as secretary-general of the UN, which faces unprecedented global instability, wars and its own crushing budget crisis. Chile’s Michelle Bachelet, Argentina’s Rafael Grossi, Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan and Senegal’s Macky Sall are each to face grillings by 193 member states and non-governmental organizations for three hours today and tomorrow. It is only the second time the UN has held a public question-and-answer, a format created in 2016 to boost transparency. Ultimately the five permanent members of the UN’s top body, the Security Council, hold the power, wielding vetoes over who leads the
A humanoid robot that won a half-marathon race for robots in Beijing on Sunday ran faster than the human world record in a show of China’s technological leaps. The winner from Honor, a Chinese smartphone maker, completed the 21km race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, said a WeChat post by the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, also known as Beijing E-Town, where the race began. That was faster than the human world record holder, Ugandan Jacob Kiplimo, who finished the same distance in about 57 minutes in March at the Lisbon road race. The performance by the robot marked a significant step forward
RSS