US pledges $350m in tsunami aid

[Cunard]

Like i have said before, the US govt had said from the very beginning, 35 million was just a beginning and would probably reach $ 1 billion


US pledges $350m in tsunami aid

The US plans to increase by 10-fold - to $350m - its contribution to help the survivors of the Indian Ocean tsunami.

The largest pledge so far was made just before talks between senior US and UN figures on co-ordinating aid efforts.

The UN says $1.2bn in aid has been pledged so far, for about five million survivors. But relief work appears disorganised, correspondents say.

At least 124,000 people died in the tsunami. The UN says the toll is nearing 150,000 and may never be known.

Map of affected countries and their death tolls

"The vast majority of those are in Indonesia and Aceh, which is the least assessed area because of logistical constraints, and it may therefore raise further," UN Humanitarian Affairs Co-ordinator Jan Egeland told reporters.

"We will never ever have the absolute definite figure because there are many fishermen and villages which have just gone and we have no chance of finding out how many they were."


It is a race against time and we are pressing ahead, trying to do it as fast as we can
Kofi Annan

5,000 Europeans missing
Struggle to identify Thai dead
Thousands are still missing after a huge undersea earthquake struck off the Indonesian island of Sumatra on Sunday, sending giant waves smashing into coastlines from Malaysia to East Africa.

New Year festivities were cancelled in several affected countries where memorial services were held.

Other tsunami developments:

* In the north-eastern village of Mullaitivu in Tamil Tiger-held territory in Sri Lanka, rebel youths burn corpses of the more than 3,000 people who died

* It could be weeks if not months before all those killed in Thailand are identified, rescue teams say

* At least 5,000 Europeans are still missing

* The exact number of missing Americans is unavailable - authorities say they are working with about 2,000 to 3,000 names.

Aid struggles to get through

US Secretary of State Colin Powell - who is to visit stricken areas on Sunday - said the ten-fold increase in Washington's aid contribution was indicative of extraordinary need.

Speaking after talks in New York with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Mr Powell called on all other countries to make as significant a contribution.


A girl eats from her mother's hands at a relief camp in Port Blair, in India's south-eastern Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Thousands of people and hundreds of vehicles are in the sea and we can still see floating buses in deep sea
D. Indika, Colombo, Sri Lanka

Readers' experiences

"This is an unprecedented disaster," Mr Powell said. "I hope that the world will be generous."

Mr Annan said it was a "a race against time and we are pressing ahead, trying to do it as fast as we can".

Both men agreed that the priority was the Indonesian province of Aceh, which bore the brunt of both the earthquake and the sea surges.

Mr Powell said the US was working very closely with the UN.

He hoped that in due course, the coalition formed by the US, Australia, Japan and China would "go out of business", as regional governments and international organisations took on the co-ordination of aid and reconstruction.

Aid has begun arriving in the worst affected areas, including Meulaboh, the ravaged Indonesian town closest to the epicentre of the earthquake.

The Indonesian navy says 90% of the town has been destroyed.

But there is still no sign of a co-ordinated relief operation for the estimated two million people who have been displaced in Aceh, says the BBC's Jonathan Head.

Planes have been dropping supplies, unable to land at the nearest airport. But air distribution remains a major problem because of a total collapse of infrastructure.


NATURAL DISASTERS
2004: Asian quake disaster - more than 124,000 dead
2003: Earthquake in Bam, Iran, officially kills 26,271
1976: Earthquake in Tangshan, China, kills 242,000
1970: Cyclone in Bangladesh kills 500,000
1923: Tokyo earthquake kills 140,000
1887: China's Yellow River breaks its banks in Huayan Kou killing 900,000
1826: Tsunami kills 27,000 in Japan
1815: Volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora on Indonesia's Sumbawa Island kills 90,000
1556: Earthquake in China's Shanxi and Henan provinces kills 830,000

World's worst disasters
Tsunami: how to help
There is still no way of reaching outlying areas where roads have been blocked and the death toll is thought to be highest. In some areas, survivors are starving and eating leaves.

In India, authorities are refusing to allow foreign aid agencies to join relief efforts in the devastated islands of Andaman and Nicobar. They say supplies are welcome but local authorities should be in charge of distributing them.

In Sri Lanka - the second worst-hit country - poor infrastructure remains a problem for remote mountainous areas.

Some aid is getting through to northern areas held by Tamil Tiger rebels, some of which are co-operating with the government in Colombo.

The BBC's Jeremy Bowen says a lot of the aid reaching Tamil territory, though, appears to be convoys organised by local groups of businesses and churches - separate from the Sri Lankan government.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4138763.stm#map

[methodman535]

So what?