Two weeks after it was hit by Asia's tsunami, parts of Banda Aceh are showing signs of life: customers haggle at markets overflowing with chilies, squawking chickens and tropical fruits. Barber shops are open, and old men while away the morning sipping coffee and puffing on pungent clove cigarettes in street-side cafes.
But a short drive across this provincial capital and it is a different scene: back hoes drag up bloated corpses from the debris of a residential area and dump them on the sidewalk. Survivors who have lost everything scavenge in the ruins of a shoe shop for something to sell, and plead for money.
PHOTO: AFP
The most powerful earthquake in 40 years sent giant waves tearing through this city on Indonesia's Sumatra island on Dec. 26, killing up to 40,000 people and leaving many more homeless and traumatized.
In districts that were spared the wrath of the sea, a semblance of normality has returned. But in the hardest hit areas, the horror remains acute.
"My wife and my son are dead," said one survivor, Hariyanto, as he picked through the debris near where his house once stood. "Even if I find them I will not be able to recognize them."
Teams of volunteers wearing face masks and plastic gloves comb the city collecting bodies and bury them in mass graves, but thousands still remain rotting under the debris of collapsed houses or the tons of wood and trees that lie piled up on the streets. The stench of death is unbearable in many neighborhoods.
Hundreds of makeshift refugee camps dot the city, with survivors subsisting on rice and instant noodles. Naked children play in dirty rivers that run through some of the settlements. There are fears that deadly waterborne diseases like cholera and dysentery could soon spread among the survivors.
Banda Aceh was one of the first places to experience the tsunami before it traveled across kilometers of ocean laying waste to coastal regions in 10 other countries in Asia and Africa. More than 150,000 have been killed, 100,000 of them on Sumatra, which took the full force of the waves.
Many of those killed were taking Sunday morning walks or playing on the beaches on either side of the city when the tsunami hit.
"Look at this, it will take us at least 10 years to recover," said Muktadin, a motorcycle rickshaw driver whose vehicle had got stuck in the thick mud that coats much of the city.
In the first two days after the tsunami, witnesses reported seeing thousands of shocked residents wandering the streets in a daze, and authorities were unable to cope with the scale of the disaster.
All but one of its five hospitals were knocked out, electricity and phone links were cut and looting was widespread.
Aid operations were slow to start amid the chaos, but the relief effort is now in full swing.
Scores of foreign and local aid organizations and military troops are involved in what the UN is calling the largest and most complex emergency relief operation ever.
They say they will be here for at least two years.
"Things are improving, but people will be traumatized for years to come," said Suprizal, who used to work in the city's most upmarket hotel, which collapsed when the quake struck.
"The city is still dead," he added.
Banda Aceh's 17th century Baiturahman Mosque hosted Friday prayers for the first time since the disaster last week.
Many in the staunchly Islamic region believe that Allah ordered the disaster as punishment to its 4.3 million people for failing to live up to His teachings.
"We have forgotten about Allah and this is what we get," said Ingli, who lost two nephews to the waves.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy