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Sify News – Grisly search continues for tsunami dead, By Barry Neild in Lamno

Wreathed in smoke from burning debris, Herry Supriyadi stumbles forward clutching a grimy human skull. Six months after the tsunami struck its shores, this macabre scene is repeated daily in Indonesia’s Aceh province as the hunt for bodies continues unabated.

Scores of corpses, now mostly only skin and bone, are still being dragged from the wreckage every week in Aceh, emphasising the scale of the disaster and pushing up a death toll the extent of which may never be fully known.

While official searches have been called off in all of the Indian Ocean countries affected by the December 26 disaster, dogged volunteers such as Supriyadi refuse to give up…

“If we leave bodies unburied, we will be punished by God,” he said.

Official figures put the global death toll from the tsunami at 180,355. But with confusion over the body count in Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka, even as ad hoc gangs unearth more, authorities have largely given up an accurate tally.

On discovering a victim’s remains, Supriyadi and his gang perform a brief Islamic burial rite, purifying the corpse with water, before sealing it in a body bag and interring it, usually on the spot where it was uncovered.

When identification papers are found, they try to contact relatives, but with almost all victims now reduced to skeletons, except where alluvial mud from the tsunami has preserved muscle and flesh, the majority remain anonymous.

“We can’t even tell the difference between men and women. Maybe sometimes the long hair will tell us, sometimes the only way to tell is by what kind of underwear is on the body,” said Supriyadi…

“The first time you do it is quite traumatic, but then it just becomes normal,” said Supriyadi, who left his job as a taxi driver in the Sumatra island city of Pekanbaru to join the hunt on January 1.

Curtsy: India Uncut.