Growing signs of tsunami recovery

The threat of disease decimating survivors of Asia's tsunami has receded but aid agencies are remaining on their guard, the UN said yesterday as doctors reported children dying from pneumonia.

Indonesia found almost 4,000 more bodies of tsunami victims, taking the global death toll from the disaster above 160,000 with searches completed for bodies in the areas most seriously damaged by the December 26 earthquake and tsunami that it triggered.

Despite the toll increase, signs of recovery were emerging. Life was starting to return to normal in towns and villages on battered Indian Ocean coasts with markets reopening and fishermen casting their nets at sea again.

The debris could be cleared within a few weeks, Indonesian Information and Communications Minister Sofyan Djalil told reporters in Banda Aceh, capital of hardest-hit Aceh province.

Worries were fading that the death toll could double if disease broke out in afflicted areas, but aid agencies were keeping up their guard and acting to prevent malaria in Aceh.

"There are no alarm bells ringing, but we cannot slacken our efforts. The threat is still there," Margareta Wahlstrom, the UN special coordinator for the disaster, told reporters in Jakarta after returning from Banda Aceh.

In Indonesia, at least 110,000 people died and many thousands more are missing after the earthquake off the coast of northern Sumatra island.

More than 30,000 died in Sri Lanka, over 15,000 in India and 5,300 in Thailand. With deaths also reported in Malaysia, the Maldives, Bangladesh, Myanmar and east African nations, the total stands at more than 162,000.

The tsunami struck without warning in a region where such waves are virtually unknown. Thousands of lives could have been saved if Indian Ocean nations had a tsunami warning system similar to one operating in the Pacific, officials have said.

While countries race to set up a permanent Indian Ocean warning system, Japan and the United States, which have decades of experience with tsunami alerts, will take on the job temporarily, Kyodo news agency reported.

To try to build a buffer against future tsunamis, Indonesia will replant swathes of mangrove forest along its vulnerable coastline, said Forestry Minister Malam Sambat Kaban.

Environmental experts say southeast Asia's mangroves - many ripped out to make room for shrimp and fish farms - could have helped to slow the tsunami by providing a barrier between the killer waves and land.