Survivors found on Indian island

By The Associated Press

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka -- Bureaucratic bungling has blocked food and medicine from reaching 70 percent of Sri Lankans left destitute by the tsunami, a government official said Wednesday, while nine survivors of the disaster were found deep in a jungle on a remote Indian island.

In a drama that has captured worldwide attention, a judge in Sri Lanka ruled Wednesday that a couple must undergo a DNA test to prove they are the parents of the 4-month-old tsunami survivor known as "Baby 81." After the ruling, the distraught couple stormed into the hospital where the infant is being held, screaming "Give us our baby!" They were briefly held by police, then released.

Thilak Ranavirajah, chief of Sri Lanka's presidential task force coordinating relief, said bureaucratic incompetence and ignorance had considerably slowed aid delivery. He estimated relief had reached only 30 percent of those who need it in the second hardest-hit nation, after Indonesia.

"This is not satisfactory," Ranavirajah said. "The president directed me to see that all families, or at least 70 percent to 75 percent of them, get relief by this weekend."

The massive Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami that struck on Dec. 26 killed more than 30,000 in Sri Lanka, while nearly 1 million people lost family members or their homes.

On India's remote Campbell Bay island, police searching for bodies found nine tsunami survivors deep in a jungle. They had spent 38 days wandering across villages flattened by the killer waves, eating coconuts and hunting boars to survive and making fires by rubbing sticks together.

The nine people belong to the Nicobarese tribe and include five men, two women and two teenage girls, Inspector Shaukat Hussain told The Associated Press by telephone from Campbell Bay, the only town in Great Nicobar, India's southernmost island.

The island, located in the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago, is also known as Campbell Bay, after its only town. It is just 140 miles from Banda Aceh, the worst-hit area in Indonesia. Many of the island's villages were wiped out.

"They were sitting in the forest when we saw them, and they just ran to us, without saying anything," said Hussain. "They seemed happy, yes, but there was no hugging and tears and shouting in joy and all that."

Two of the survivors were severely dehydrated and were hospitalized. The other seven were sent to a relief camp.