Eight days on, hungry and sick survivors of the Indian Ocean tsunami are waiting for food and medicine in growing desperation as a multinational aid operation tries to reach remote towns ravaged by the waves. The United Nations said 1.8 million survivors needed food ? but that the world?s response in money and resources gave grounds for hope ? as dehydration, disease and hunger threaten to add to a disaster that has claimed at least 144,000 lives.

Tropical rains in Indonesia?s northern Aceh province, with more than half of the known dead, and flooding in Sri Lanka have compounded the misery for survivors and created more problems for troops and aid workers trying to deliver relief. South Asian airports groaned under the weight of hundreds of flights carrying medicines, food and shelter as the world?s biggest relief operation since World War Two, backed by $ 2 billion (1.04 billion pounds) in government pledges, stepped into high gear.

On Sunday, World Bank president James Wolfensohn said his agency could double or triple the $ 250 million it has promised for regional reconstruction, and would also be looking at debt relief for the poor nations worst affected by the disaster. Canada doubled its government aid contribution to $ 67 million. ?The world is really coming together here in a way that we probably have never seen before,? UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland said in New York.

?Overall I am more optimistic today than I was yesterday, and especially the day before yesterday, that the global community will be able to face up to this enormous challenge,? Egeland said. ?The international system is working.? Money has yet to overcome the logistical nightmare of distributing the aid, especially to remote parts of Aceh on Sumatra island where roads and airstrips have been washed away.

Helicopters from the US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln began dropping boxes of food and bottled water around the shattered city of Banda Aceh on Sunday. Wild scenes in some places meant the deliveries had to be aborted. Egeland said relief teams hoped to reach all of the estimated 700,000 hungry in Sri Lanka within three more days, but that it could take longer before enough food aid gets to nearly 1 million in need in hard-to-reach parts of Indonesia, where the known death toll has topped 94,000.

India?s toll of dead and feared dead neared 15,000. Tempers flared in the remote Andaman and Nicobar islands, where outside access was still being restricted while hundreds of bodies lay decomposing in the sun. However, affected nations, working with international aid agencies, private relief groups and donor governments, are easing some early bottlenecks and improving their capacity to get in goods on a daily basis to serve the estimated 5 million people requiring some form of aid. Logistics centres are up and running in Rome, Jakarta and Sumatra, and a command-and-control centre set up at the U-Tapao military air base in Thailand is coordinating the many civil and military flights involved in the relief effort, Egeland said.

Translating money into relief

Australia, Britain, Germany, India, Pakistan, Singapore and the United States are among governments providing civil or military aircraft, which were invaluable in quickly translating aid contributions into actual assistance on the ground. Germany army colonel Jurgen Canders arrived in Banda Aceh yesterday with a nine-member medical unit. He said the team included tropical disease and public health specialists, and its mobile capability would allow them to conduct surgery in remote areas.

Flight Lieutenant Harvey Reynolds of the Royal Australian Air Force said a giant Antonov transport carrying at least three Australian helicopters was due to land. The choppers would begin running aid down Aceh?s devastated west coast. Reynolds said Australia already had four Hercules transports flying up to 10 flights a day into Banda Aceh from Medan, capital of North Sumatra.

In Indonesia, UNICEF has said reports are coming in of children starting to die of pneumonia. UN health officials say disease could kill maybe 50,000. More than 100,000 people are living in temporary shelters and camps in Indonesia alone, many suffering from diarrhoea, fever, respiratory infections, headaches and stomach problems.

The United States has sent 1,500 troops to help in Sri Lanka, which lost 30,000 citizens. One US senator said it may eventually spend billions of dollars helping Asia recover. Secretary of State Colin Powell and President George W. Bush?s brother Jeb are headed to the region on Monday to help assess reconstruction needs. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is due in Indonesia on Thursday, where he is expected to appeal for more relief at a world aid conference.

Forty countries lost nationals in addition to the 13 directly hit. Around half of the 5,000 killed in Thailand were foreign tourists. Among European nations, Sweden suffered the greatest loss, although it cut the estimated number of missing citizens by about a fifth on Sunday to 2,915, with 52 confirmed dead. Many recovered bodies are awaiting DNA analysis for identification, while others, washed out to sea, may never be recovered.

Tomi SOETJIPTO Dean YATES

<B>Tsunami appeal fastest in history</B>

The British, haunted by images of disaster from the Asian tsunami, have donated up to one million pounds an hour in the country?s fastest ever charity appeal. The catastrophe has struck a deep emotional chord in everyone from millionaires to prisoners, from pensioners to children raiding their piggy banks. ?Our fellow human beings need our help,? said International Development Minister Hilary Benn whose government donation of 50 million pounds has been dwarfed by the 60 million pounds collected from the public. Tragic images of orphaned children desperately seeking their parents have pulled at heartstrings and loosened pursestrings like no other catastrophe since Bob Geldof launched Band Aid 20 years ago to help the starving in Africa. ?This will be the largest humanitarian relief operation in history and it is important every country does all it can,? Benn said of the race against time to save millions in Asia. A spokesman for the national fundraisers told Reuters: ?This is the fastest appeal in the history of the Disasters Emergency Committee and at its height, donations were coming in at just under one million pounds an hour.? Even champion racehorse Rock of Gibraltar has ridden to the rescue with plans reported for the stallion to sire a foal for the highest bidder in a charity auction. At Maidstone jail, prisoners gave up smoking for the New Year and asked the governor to donate the money to the tsunami appeal. On day one of the annual sale at the luxury department store Harrods, two percent of the takings are due to be earmarked for the fund. In a Welsh Post office, one elderly pensioner withdrew her weekly pension of 120 pounds and gave 100 pounds to the appeal, saying ?My time is short now.?

UNICEF said one man donated 501 pounds ? one pound came from his young son?s piggy bank.? Tabloids vie with each other to see who can raise most from their readers. So why then have the British given on such a huge scale? Searing images of suffering have been piped into every living room in this age of 24-hour news that forever shrinks the global village.

Even religious leaders have questioned their own faith after a devastating, merciless act of nature that could not be blamed on man. Amid opulent Christmas festivities in the west, guilt may also have played a part. ?The disaster occurred at a time of year when we have just wallowed in a shameful orgy of over-indulgence and conspicuous consumption,? said Sunday Times columnist Rod Liddle. ?In the face of such irresistible destruction, we all feel weak and helpless.?

<B>Paul MAJENDIE</B>

<B>India?s untouchables gather tsunami dead</B>

They are the ?untouchables?, the lowest of the low in India?s ancient caste system. No job is too dirty or too nasty, and they are the ones cleaning up the rotting corpses from last week?s killer tsunami. The overwhelming majority of the 1,000 or so men sweating away in the tropical heat to clear the poor south Indian fishing town of Nagapattinam, which bore the brunt of the giant wave, are lower caste dalits from neighbouring villages.

Locals too afraid of disease and too sickened by the smell refuse to join the grim task of digging friends and neighbours out of the sand and debris. They just stand and watch the dalits work. Although it has been a week since the tsunami hit, and the destruction was confined to a tiny strip by the beach and port, the devastation was so fierce that several bodies ? located by the stench and the flies ? are still being discovered daily. ?I am only doing what I would do for my own wife and child,? says M. Mohan, a dalit municipal cleaner as he takes a break to wash off some of the grime of the day?s work.

?It is our duty. If a dog is dead, or a person, we have to clean it up.? Mohan and other sanitation workers from neighbouring municipalities are working around the clock to clear Nagapattinam, for an extra 50 cents a day and a meal. The smell of death still hangs heavily, mixing with the sea breeze and the almost refreshingly tart smell of the antiseptic lime powder that has turned some streets and paths white.

More than 5,525 people ? close to 40 percent of India?s estimated total 14,488 fatalities ? died along this small stretch of pure white beach, where the huts of poor fishermen were built down to the sand at the top of the beach itself.

<B>Dirty jobs</B>

Caste still plays a defining role in much of Indian society. Over 16 percent of India?s billion plus people are dalits. Despite laws banning caste discrimination, they are still routinely abused, mistreated and even killed. They do the jobs others won?t ? they clean toilets, they collect garbage, they skin cows. For Mohan, illiterate, uneducated and low caste, the only way to get a government job and the security and pension that come with it, was as a municipal sanitation worker.

For some Indians, untouchables are less than human. Just over two years ago, five dalits were lynched near New Delhi after a rumour spread that they had killed and skinned a cow, revered as sacred in India. An autopsy was conducted on the cow ? none were done for the dalits ? which confirmed the story their friends told: the cow had died of other causes and they were skinning it legally.

In the early hours of the tsunami disaster, Mohan and his colleagues worked feverishly to clear the thousands of bodies without gloves, masks or even shoes in some cases. Now, they are better equipped. But no mask ever stops the gagging smell of rotting human flesh, which becomes almost overpowering as the body is dug out, lodging deep somewhere in the back of the mouth.

Each new body discovered is painstakingly prised free of the wet sand, torn palm thatch and debris, mostly by hand. It is sweaty, backbreaking work. Shifting sand and rubble make just standing hard. It is done slowly, carefully and patiently with a delicate respect for the victim. But there is no dignity.

The almost unrecognisable body of a naked woman, one foot still surprisingly wet, clean and white as if she had just stepped from a bath, is carried on a mat to the beach. There, a small bonfire is lit with a tyre and some palm leaves and she is heaved on top. Another mat provides a pitiful attempt at modesty. Acrid, pitch-black smoke drifts to the sky. No one knows who she was. With the fear of an epidemic, there is no time to find out.

<B>Terry FRIEL</B>

<B>Girl saved tourists thanks to school lesson</B>

A 10-year-old British girl saved 100 other tourists from the Asian tsunami having warned them a giant mass of water was on its way after learning about the phenomenon weeks earlier at school. ?I was on the beach and the water started to go funny,? Tilly Smith told the Sun at the weekend from Phuket, Thailand.

?There were bubbles and the tide went out all of a sudden. I recognised what was happening and had a feeling there was going to be a tsunami. I told mummy.?

While other holidaymakers stood and stared as the disappearing waters left boats and fish stranded on the sands, Tilly recognised the danger signs because she had done a school project on giant waves caused by underwater earthquakes. Quick action by Tilly?s mother and Thai hotel staff meant Maikhao beach was quickly cleared, just minutes before a huge wave crashed ashore. The beach was one of the few on the Thai island of Phuket where no one was killed.

Her teacher, Andrew Kearney, paid tribute to his quick-thinking student. ?Tilly is a very bright, levelheaded girl ... it is an incredible coincidence that our class were learning about this type of tsunami just two weeks before Christmas,? he told the newspaper. On Sunday, the Foreign Office said 40 Britons were confirmed dead from the December 26 tsunami which claimed some 130,000 victims. The toll is expected to rise.