Landslides kill 78 as Indonesia marks third anniversary of tsunami*

Agencies in Calang and Jakarta
Thursday December 27, 2007
The Guardian

Days of torrential rain triggered landslides that killed up to 78 people
in western Indonesia yesterday.

Hundreds of soldiers, police and volunteers were trying to get
heavy-lifting equipment to affected villages on the main island of Java,
said search and rescue chief Eko Prayitno, but blocked roads were
hampering their efforts.

Some dug with bare hands through mountains of mud in search of survivors.

The disasters occurred on the third anniversary of the Asian tsunami,
which killed 230,000 people in a dozen nations. Two-thirds of those
deaths occurred on Indonesia's Sumatra island, where the province of
Aceh was hardest hit.

Survivors prayed at mass graves and mosques to mark the anniversary
yesterday, while sirens sent hundreds fleeing beaches in Indonesia
during a drill to test a warning network set up since the disaster.

Sri Lanka and India jointly lost some 45,000 people in the tsunami on
December 26 2004. The waves also killed more than 5,000 in Thailand's
resorts. In the country's Phang Nga province yesterday paper lanterns
were released to remember the dead.

The disaster promoted a global outpouring of sympathy, with pledges of
more than £6bn in aid.

In Aceh more than 100,000 houses and scores of schools and hospitals
have been rebuilt. "I hope we can turn a new page now and leave sadness,
cries and tears behind us," Aceh governor Irwandi Yusuf told hundreds
gathered at a ceremony in the hard-hit town of Calang. "I hope one day
we can pay our debt to the world by becoming a donor to other countries
hit by disasters."