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."
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
OVERHAUL: The move would likely mark the end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operated in nearly 50 languages The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda. US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
RSS