- PORT BLAIR, India
(AFP) - At least 3,000 people died in the Andaman and Nicobar islands and
30,000 people are missing after five villages in the archipelago's south
were swept away by a tsunami, officials said.
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- Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Congress Party
leader Sonia Gandhi visited the capital of the island chain and far-flung
Car Nicobar in the Indian Ocean to assess the damage Monday.
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- District official G.C. Gupta said an Indian air force
base on Car Nicobar island was swept away by a tsunami that struck Sunday
with more than 100 military personnel and family and support workers believed
dead.
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- Indian naval ships were steaming to the area which holds
more than 45,000 people on Greater Car Nicobar, its smaller sibling and
as many as 14 nearby populated islands.
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- Gupta, speaking to reporters travelling with Gandhi,
Mukherjee and Air Force Chief S. Krishnaswamy in Port Blair, said communications
in the area remained patchy.
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- "The villages are spread all over, there are 30,000
people that need to be accounted for. Some may have fled into the interior
jungles or been swept out to sea," Gupta said. "Efforts are underway
to find them."
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- The population on the islands had swelled at Christmas
as many of the people are Christians and were celebrating on the beach
when the huge walls of water hit, Gupta said.
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- The tsunami and several aftershocks followed a massive
earthquake centered off the coast of the nearby Indonesian island of Sumatra
on Sunday.
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- "Everybody is going through a trauma here"
Gandhi, who met tribals and local people at a school here and went round
various areas, told reporters.
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- "We went to various areas (in the Car Nicobar islands)
and people told us about the hardships... their traumatic experiences...
there were government employees who were angry and agitated at the administration,"
she said, adding it was difficult to provide help because the communication
system was not working.
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- On the plane back to Madras from Port Blair in Tamil
Nadu state where Gandhi arrived Monday night, she told reporters the official
death toll in the Andaman and Nicobar was 500 people.
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- The federal government has been cautious in assessing
the death toll with the cabinet saying Monday the preliminary figure was
close to 4,000 dead excluding Car Nicobar where the toll is likely to be
"quite high", Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said.
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- Totals from state and local officials show at least 6,823
dead included 3,000 in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and another 3,600
in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu and the former French colony
of Pondicherry.
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- The remote archipelago lies 1,200 kilometres (745 miles)
from mainland India and the chain is spread over 800 kilometres (500 miles)
north to south.
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- Blessed with miles of pristine beaches and a rich variety
of animal life, New Delhi has carried out little development there, intending
to leave indigenous tribes people in peace.
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- The isolation and lack of infrastructure has left whole
communities incommunicado after the giant waves struck on Sunday.
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- Six hunter-gatherer tribes including the fearsome Sentinelese
aborigines inhabit 38 of the 572 rain-forested islands, living in seclusion
from outside world for millennia.
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- India has protected the tribes from modern contact in
the fear of bacterial contamination, and little was known of their fate.
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- Shompen aborigines, numbering just 100, have occupied
the Great Nicobar island for up to 60,000 years without being touched by
modernity.
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- The Nicobaris, numbering around 30,000, form the largest
tribal group but they have left the forests to live in the modern islet-town
of Nicobar.
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- The Great Andamanese, who numbered as many as 10,000
in the 18th century, were decimated by the British after the islanders
refused to submit to the crown.
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- By the 1970s just 19 survived, and while their numbers
have crept up to 29 and homes built for them on tiny Strait island, their
fate was uncertain even before the tsunamis hit.
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- Genetic evidence suggests that the pygmy-like aborigines
-- of negrito origin with dark skin and curly hair that sets them apart
from their Asian neighbours -- have lived on the Andamans from the dawn
of civilisation.
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