Another 7,000 bodies found in Indonesia

NEW YORK — Relief workers discovered another 7,000 bodies in Indonesia yesterday as U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan flew over areas that remained beyond the reach of rescuers nearly two weeks after being flattened by a killer earthquake and resultant tsunami.

“I must admit, I have never seen such utter destruction, mile after mile,” a shaken Mr. Annan told reporters. “And you wonder, where are the people, what happened to them?”

Indonesia said rescuers had discovered 7,118 more bodies in Meulaboh, a destroyed fishing town on Sumatra’s west coast that took the brunt of the Dec. 26 disaster.

The official death toll from nearly a dozen nations on the rim of the Indian Ocean rose to 147,000 with an estimated 5 million people left homeless.

Military transports continued bringing tons of aid to airports in Malaysia and Thailand, to be reloaded into smaller planes destined for hard-hit areas such as Sri Lanka and the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

Sumatra, where as many as 200 villages have not been reached by relief workers, is “the heart of the crisis,” said Kevin Kennedy of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Eleven nations, led by the United States, have deployed military assets in the region, supplying ships, planes, soldiers and civil engineers.

However, airlifting bulky supplies is too inefficient, given the volume of aid needed.

“A Black Hawk helicopter carries a ton of food,” Mr. Kennedy said, “but what we really need are roads” for 10-ton and 20-ton trucks.

“Many areas, particularly in the western coast of Sumatra, are still unreachable by land,” he said. “The military would be called on to render assistance in building and repairing bridges and roads and so forth, using the local capacities as much as possible.”

More than 400 international nongovernmental organizations and U.N.-related agencies are in the region, according to OCHA.

Also, more than $4 billion has been pledged from countries and international organizations.

The world’s wealthiest nations agreed yesterday to a temporary suspension of payments on $272 billion in debt owed by affected nations.

Nearly two weeks after huge waves struck, Sri Lanka, with more than 30,000 known dead, added 528 names to its list of missing for a total of 4,984.

Indonesia, the worst-hit country, put its latest toll at 101,318 dead and 10,070 missing.

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