REUTERS:
Indonesian refugees from the tsunami gather under an approaching helicopter to receive food and supplies, on Saturday. Seahawk aircraft from Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron Two (HS-2) 'Golden Falcons' aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72), are distributing humanitarian relief throughout the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia, (Reuters):
STARVING PEOPLE besieged helicopters carrying the first aid to remote Indonesian towns yesterday as frustration grew at the slowness of help a week after tsunamis devastated Indian Ocean coastlines.
The United Nations has forecast the death toll across South-east Asia to reach 150,000.
The United Nations said 1.8 million victims needed food but that it could be two more weeks before some communities were reached, giving dehydration, disease and hunger time to add to a disaster that has claimed at least 129,817 lives.
Tempers flared in India's remote Andaman and Nicobar islands, where outside access was still being restricted while hundreds of bodies lay scattered in the open.
In Sri Lanka, which lost some 30,000 citizens, nature twisted the knife as torrential rains flooded refugee camps.
"We already lost our homes. We came here then the rains came and took away our bundles, everything we had left," said G.K. Sambasivam, 65, dozens of whose relatives were missing.
In Sumatra's Aceh province, which accounts for more than half the dead, the United States aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln boosted aid operations, not least because its helicopters do not need the roads or airstrips that have been washed away.
"The logistical situation is looking a lot better than it did a couple of days ago ... Things are improving slowly," said Michael Elmquist, head of U.N. disaster relief in Indonesia.
FRUSTRATION IN ANDAMANS
Around the devastated provincial capital Banda Aceh, U.S. and Indonesian military air crews threw boxes of food and bottled water into crowds of survivors.
But wild scenes in some places meant the deliveries had to be aborted.
After a mission down Sumatra's west coast, Captain Larry Burt, commander of a helicopter air wing on the Lincoln, said he had seen "people standing there waving flags trying to signal us. There are so many, you just can't stop for all of them."
On the Indian Andaman and Nicobar islands, like Banda Aceh close to the epicentre of the huge quake that triggered the waves on December 26, frustration was also mounting.
People were angry at not getting relief supplies in Campbell Bay, the main town in the southernmost island of Great Nicobar, where widespread devastation has been reported.
Local authorities said a government official had been manhandled and police sent reinforcements.
The top army general in the region said 400 villagers still remained stranded on a hilltop on the southernmost island.
"We have been sitting here in Port Blair trying to send a 100 volunteers ... to Car Nicobar and other badly hit islands," said Sudipta Roy, programme director at the umbrella group Church of North India, working in the Andamans' main town.
"But the administration is refusing to allow us access to some regions and this is extremely frustrating."
In Indonesia, the United Nations Children's Fund said reports were coming in of children starting to die of pneumonia. U.N. health officials said disease could kill maybe 50,000.
