Starving must wait even longer

After a week of starvation and isolation, help finally arrived in the worst-hit areas yesterday.

But relief efforts to some villages in Aceh had to be abandoned when hungry mobs besieged the helicopters attempting to distribute food and water.

The United Nations said that despite the growing pace of the aid effort, it would be days before 1 million people needing food in the Indonesian province would be reached, and the aid operation there faces the prospect of renewed civil strife.

The number of victims in urgent need of food across the region was put at 1.8 million and the official death toll rose to almost 130,000. The UN predicted it would reach 150,000.

The operation now includes helicopters from the US, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia and flotillas of naval vessels, including an American aircraft carrier group. Britain is considering deploying ground troops and 1500 US Marines were due to arrive in Sri Lanka on an amphibious assault vessel.

But as survivors leaped on the meagre consignments of dried noodles, biscuits and energy drinks dropped from US Sea Hawk helicopters, the UN warned that logistical problems were still hampering aid efforts, and disease could yet claim 50,000 more lives.

Unicef said it was receiving reports of infants dying from pneumonia in Aceh while other aid agencies warned that waterborne diseases were spreading. Jorgen Poulsen, the head of the Danish Red Cross in the devastated provincial capital of Banda Aceh, said: "We are sitting on a ticking time bomb. We hope we can avoid cholera. The problem is we have already seen people vomiting in town."

Organisers of the international relief operation said a surge of pledges heralding the New Year had brought the international fund to US$2 billion ($2.8 billion).

In the Russian town of Beslan, where 330 people - half of them children - were killed in a school hostage drama in September, families announced they would donate 950,000 rubles ($48,000).

While the money rolled in, the focus shifted to its delivery.

The authorities in Indonesia, where more than half the 129,817 known victims of the disaster perished, said that 100,000 people across Aceh living in temporary shelters and camps were now receiving aid.

Jan Egeland, the UN official in charge of emergency relief, said: "Overall I am more optimistic today than I was yesterday that the global community will be able to face up to this enormous challenge."

In Sri Lanka, the UN said food supplies would reach the 700,000 people needing them within three days despite monsoon conditions.

 

But while the military helicopters in Indonesia began the long task of distributing hundreds of tons of supplies backed up in Aceh's congested airports, chaotic scenes meant some deliveries had to be aborted.

A spokesman for the World Food Programme in Banda Aceh said: "A few helicopters have tried to land in the coastal villages of Banda Aceh but mobs on the ground desperate for the supplies prevented them from landing."

Even as supplies trickled in, the scale of the long-term rebuilding effort required became clearer. Officials in Calang, where up to 70 per cent of the population of 10,000 were killed, said the town would have to be abandoned.

The situation in Aceh was further complicated by claims from the Free Aceh Movement - which has announced a unilateral ceasefire - that the Indonesian military was sending in soldiers under guise of the relief effort. Indonesian commanders confirmed that counter-insurgency measures were continuing but insisted that two-thirds of troops had been reassigned to coping with the aftermath of the disaster.

- INDEPENDENT