Tempers flared over the sluggish pace of aid efforts in remote and restricted Andamans and Nicobars on Sunday as hundreds of bodies lay scattered around the islands a week after the tsunami struck.

Police had to send reinforcements. ?The situation in Campbell Bay in Great Nicobar is very grim,? a senior island administration official told Reuters in Port Blair, the region?s capital city. The top army general in the region who is coordinating relief efforts said 400 villagers still remained stranded on a hilltop in the island on the southernmost tip of the archipelago, where they fled to escape the waves.

<B>Mistrust of outsiders</B>

?I admit that some areas south of Campbell Bay are still marooned but we have now reached all those who are marooned by air dropping food and other supplies and more than 200 people have been evacuated by helicopters,? Lt. Gen. B.S. Thakur said. The chain of more than 500 islands, most of them uninhabited, lie 1,200 km east off the Indian mainland, and have a couple of military airbases located on them.

Also home to hundreds of stone age tribespeople, many of the islands are off limits to foreigners and mainland Indians alike. Mistrust of outsiders by the military and local bureaucracy has compounded the practical difficulties of the aid effort. Aid workers from foreign relief groups Medicins Sans Frontieres and Oxfam have languished in Port Blair, unable to reach the badly hit southern islands.

Indian Christian groups complain local officials were hindering their attempts to take aid to the tribes, many of whom are Christian. ?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 Church of North India, an umbrella organization for churches in northern India. ?But the administration is refusing to allow us access to some regions and this is extremely frustrating.?

Local officials said the question of allowing international aid agencies access to the worst-hit southern islands was a decision that could only be made by the federal government. Lt. Gen. Thakur said, however, there was no attempt to deny foreign nationals access for reasons of national security.

?There is no such rationale that is stated per se,? he said. ?We have taken the foreign media to Car Nicobar even today?. Authorities in New Delhi say there are 812 confirmed deaths in the entire chain but India?s army chief told reporters that in the worst-hit island of Car Nicobar alone, more than 1,000 corpses lay scattered. India raised its tsunami toll to 14,488 dead or feared dead on Sunday including 5,421 missing on the islands. Most islands can only be reached by sea but last Sunday?s monster waves destroyed jetties. Rescue workers have been using small boats to land, but many inland roads are not cleared.

<B>?Ghost villages?</B>

Authorities say they are getting their act together. ?The momentum is picking up slowly. There are difficulties, bodies have to be spotted, identified,? Army Chief NC. Vij told reporters. The army is using sniffer dogs to find victims. Authorities have started vaccinating survivors against cholera, typhoid and tetanus.

?The main concern remains the threat of epidemic and the process of removing bodies continues,? said Brigadier JM. Devados, the overall relief commander for the Car Nicobar island where thousands are dead or missing. ?Twelve of 15 villages have been washed away. Villages are ghost villages.? Sitting astride vital trade routes heading west from the straits of Malacca, the islands offer India a vital foothold in southeast Asia and a counter to Chinese influence in the region.

Ruled directly from New Delhi, the islands housed a notorious jail during British colonial rule. Even today, critics say the welfare of locals is low on New Delhi?s priorities. ?Times have changed but not mindsets,? the Indian Express wrote on Sunday. ?The Andaman and Nicobar archipelago is a collective second class citizen. Welcome to India?s in-house colony,? it said.

<B>Sanjeev MIGLANI Suresh SESHADRI</B>

<I>The chain of more than 500 islands, most of them uninhabited, lie 1,200 km east off the Indian mainland, and have a couple of military airbases located on them.</I>

<B>Pregnant survivor finds whole family</B>

In this Indonesian city of misery and despair, heavily pregnant Haiwati tells a story of survival that shows miracles can happen. Due to give birth any day, Haiwati, 38, was at home with two of her four sons when a massive earthquake unleashed a killer tsunami on Banda Aceh on December 26. At one point, Haiwati prepared for death. Having sought sanctuary in a nearby mosque after terrified residents exhorted people to flee, water poured in.

Unable to get out, she put one of her sons on her shoulders. Water rose to her neck. Exhaustion set in. A week later, Haiwati cannot believe she escaped with her life from the destruction that killed some 94,000 Acehnese. She has found her entire family, even her husband, who was working in Calang, a town on the obliterated west coast of Aceh province, where officials say only 30 percent of people survived. Haiwati has also taken under her wing a distant cousin she found in a refugee camp. The girl, 16, cannot find her parents. ?I just ran and ran with my two sons,? Haiwati said, feeling her bulging belly inside a traditional red maternity dress as she spoke inside the camp in this devastated city. ?I stopped outside the mosque and said to my sister, who ran with me, ?please take my sons?.

Leave me here. I?m tired.??

Haiwati?s sister urged her to keep going. As panic around them grew, her sister grabbed Haiwati?s 10-year-old son and fled. Haiwati started running again with her terrified seven-year old boy, Sikno, but she was too weak and became separated from her sister. Seconds later the water caught up, washing her into the Lamteneung mosque.

She saw dozens of people clinging to the roof of the wooden village hall.

As the water rose, she lifted Sikno onto her shoulders. ?Then I thought, ?okay, if I die at least I?ll die with my boy,? Haiwati said, Sikno standing shyly beside her. At that moment, she said, a jerry can washed in through one of the mosque?s windows and floated toward her. ?I had no energy left. I just stood there looking at it. Then I held onto it, with my son,? she said. ?I guess yes, that was a miracle.?

<B>Thais order foreigners? kin away from morgues</B>

Thai police yesterday ordered families and friends of foreigners to stay away from tsunami-hit areas, including Buddhist temples turned temporary morgues where they have searched for missing loved ones. Police said the move was necessary to allow hundreds of forensic experts to get on with the job of identifying bodies of thousands of Thais and foreigners through DNA samples.

?Friends and family members must refrain from visiting the tsumami-affected locations, temples, mosques, all operational grounds, including DNA gathering sites and autopsy sites,? Police Lieutenant Tuaytup Dwibyunsin said in a statement. ?We appreciate your assistance very much, but we have to get organised,? he said. ?We don?t want you risking your lives?. Hundreds of foreigners have scoured temporary morgues in the past eight days, searching for family and friends either dead or missing after the killer waves slammed into Thailand?s Andaman Sea coast and islands.

Thailand?s national disaster centre said 5,046 bodies ? 2,459 of them foreigners ? had been recovered from smashed luxury hotels and fishing villages, a popular destination for sun-starved foreigners during the cold northern European winter. Nearly 4,000 people are still missing ? a number which dropped from about 6,500 after Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said the list was being reviewed ? including more than 1,600 foreigners, many of them Scandinavians.

While respecting their grief, Tuaytup said the order was necessary to ?prevent tampering of evidence and obstructing official gathering of DNA information?. It was addressed to ?friends, family members searching for loved ones, foreigners, foreign volunteers and members of the press? and aimed at protecting them from potential disease. Foreign volunteers must register with the authorities and needed permission to enter restricted areas, it said.

The clampdown comes a day after a 19-nation forensic task force was announced to oversee the grisly work of identifying bodies ? mainly through dental records and DNA testing ? which will take many months to complete. Some bodies may never be recovered or identified, task force leaders said. They said the corpses ? badly decomposed after more than a week in the tropical sun ? were now beyond recognition and families and friends should go home.

Search teams zeroed in on the hardest hit areas yesterday, and Thai and Japanese navy ships scoured the seas for more dead. Rescue teams expected to finish clearing bodies from Phi Phi island, made famous in the 2000 film ?The Beach?, after pulling out 50-60 rotting corpses on Sunday, Interior Minister Bhokin Bhalakula told reporters. Thaksin, eager to rebuild a key part of Thailand?s lucrative tourist trade quickly, was to tour Phi Phi later yesterday.

Bhokin said the main search effort continued in Phang Nga province, where thousands of foreign tourists and Thai villagers were swept away from the area around Khao Lak beach by giant waves eight days ago. ?We should clear them from Phi Phi on Monday. Phuket and Krabi have finished and the only work that remains is in Phang Nga,? he said, referring to the island of Phuket, one of Asia?s premier beach resorts, and the mainland province of Krabi.

<B>Darren SCHUETTLER</B>

<B>Maldives struggles to house thousands</B>

The low-lying Indian Ocean archipelago of the Maldives said yesterday it was struggling to house five percent of its population after tsunami waves destroyed islands and resorts, killing at least 82 people. ?In 14 islands there are no structures standing and in other islands even where walls are still standing they are not habitable,? chief government spokesman Ahmed Shaheed told Reuters.

The chain of 1,200 tiny palm-fringed coral islands dotted across 500 miles of ocean off the toe of India and standing only a few feet (barely a metre) above sea level was severely affected by the tsunami, forcing the government to declare a state of emergency and appeal for immediate international aid. Shaheed said 14 islands had been flattened and another 53 severely affected, leaving some 15,000 people displaced out of the country?s 300,000 population. The Maldives has received some $ 3 million so far in aid from Pakistan, India, Japan and other nations to help rebuilding work estimated at $1 billion.

?There is a massive international effort here, but this does not solve the main problem of housing. We are looking at building 4,000 houses from scratch,? Shaheed said. He said the cost of housing alone would be about $70 million. Many schools, jetties, ports and other coastal structures have also been destroyed. The archipelago is also running out of drinking water and a few cases of diarrhoea have been reported in some camps for the homeless.

?About 79 islands don?t have safe drinking water,? he said. The government delayed a parliamentary election scheduled for last week after the tsunami struck. Meanwhile, the Maldives was keeping an eye out for dead bodies and debris from other disaster-hit countries being washed ashore, posing a possible health threat to its people. ?Given the scale of the devastation, carcasses, parts of boats, timber and other debris is likely to get washed onto our shores from nearby countries,? Shaheed said.

<B>Chamintha THILAKARATHNA</B>