Torrential rain hampers Sri Lankan relief effort

BATTICALOA, SRI LANKA - Torrential rain hampered efforts by relief workers to deliver much-needed aid on Friday local time to hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans made homeless by the Indian Ocean tsunami.

Many coastal roads that survived Sunday's devastating disaster were cut off by the downpour, which started shortly before dawn on a day declared one of national mourning by the government.

"Even the Gods are crying," said a Batticaloa hotelier.

Meanwhile, the death toll across Asia is approaching 150,000 and may rise even higher. However, the exact number of dead may never be known because the hardest-hit areas are so remote, the United Nations said.

"The figures may be approaching 150,000 dead. The vast majority of those are in Indonesia and Aceh, which is the least assessed area because of logistical constraints, and it may therefore rise further," said Jan Egeland, the UN emergency relief coordinator.

"We will never ever have the absolute definite figure because there are many nameless fishermen and villages that have just gone and we have no chance of finding out how many they were."

A team of officials, doctors and Kuwaiti aid workers was twice forced to abandon efforts to get to Sri Lanka's east, first by air and then by land because of heavy rains.

Dr Abdul Sheriffdeen, appointed by the president to oversee health in Amapara, couldn't get through and went back to Colombo.

"This is a big setback," he said, adding that Batticaloa had been cut-off

Hundreds of trucks, buses and private cars carrying medical supplies, food, water and clothes for survivors of the tsunami were backed up on roads leading to Batticaloa city.

Volunteers from colleges, universities and clubs sat patiently in their vehicles, many of them starting to eat the food they had hoped to deliver.

In the city itself, those whose homes or business escaped more than flooding from the tsunami abandoned efforts to mop up as the deluge continued throughout the day.

Rescue workers still searching for corpses beneath the rubble of shattered buildings along the coast also took a break, standing in huddles under whatever shelter they could find.

"This is the last thing we need," said police Superintendant J. Jaganathan, at the main Hindu temple in the city.

"It is very difficult to get anything organised in this weather."

Hundreds of homeless people covered every square foot of the temple floor on Friday, lying on reed mats donated by charities.

While the children played -- the events of last Sunday seemingly forgotten already -- most of the adults sat dull-eyed and shell-shocked, the mat and the clothes they were wearing their only possessions.

The tsunami devastated the revenue-generating tourist resorts of southern and eastern Sri Lanka and also destroyed scores of villages and hamlets inhabited by hundreds of thousands of people who support the industry or eke out hand-to-mouth existence as fisherman or craftsmen.

It will take years, possible even decades for the coastal regions to recover and the country as a whole also faces serious long-term consequences.

Schools, colleges and universities near the coast that survived the tsunami have now been turned into shelters for the homeless. Industries across the country have ground to a halt as workers have gone off to find news of their families.

"We are back to where we were fifty years ago," said Batticaloa city official J.P Sivaramakrishnan.

"We are back to coconuts. People are going to have to carve new boats out of coconut wood, build new houses with coconut leaves. Eat the coconuts."

- REUTERS