Aid trickling to S. Asia

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Food drops and other aid trickled toward the Indian Ocean and southern Asia from around the world on Friday but slowly enough that the injured and the stranded in many places still had to fend for themselves as the toll from the catastrophe surged past 120,000.

The human tally in Indonesia jumped after officials said that nearly 28,000 more bodies had been uncovered in Aceh province, on the island of Sumatra, near the epicenter of Sunday's enormous undersea quake. The discovery brought the death count close to 80,000 in this country alone.

At least three times the number of dead may be seriously injured, their survival dependent on the arrival of urgent medical aid, international health experts said.

"Nobody was prepared for a disaster of this magnitude," said Vanessa Tobin, chief of water and sanitation for UNICEF.

Tanker trucks, bottled water, pumps, disinfecting kits and clean jugs are being rushed to regions struck by tsunamis in hopes of providing what survivors most urgently need: safe drinking water.

Severe shortages exist in all the affected regions, but reports from health officials suggest that the situation may be the most dire in Indonesia and the Maldives.

In Indonesia, airplanes dropped food to villagers stranded among bloating corpses Thursday, while police in a devastated provincial capital stripped looters of their clothing and forced them to sit on the street as a warning to others.

American planes delivered medical staff to Sri Lanka and body bags to Thailand, while a Thai air base used by B-52 bombers during the Vietnam War was becoming a hub for a U.S. military-led relief effort that will stretch along the Indian Ocean.

As the colossal international rescue effort struggled off the ground, relief efforts suffered a hitch when a false alarm of more killer waves sparked panic in India, Sri Lanka and Thailand and sent survivors and aid workers fleeing.

At the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan told a news conference on Thursday that a World Bank pledge of $250 million had taken the total amount devoted to the emergency to nearly $500 million. He said that more than 30 countries and millions of individuals had joined in the global campaign.

"I am satisfied with the response so far," he said but added, "the only thing I want to stress is that we are in this for the long term, and we need to help people rebuild their lives."

On Thursday, Annan met with the heads of major U.N. agencies, the ambassadors of 12 affected countries and representatives of the European Union.