Buddhist monks handed out rice and curry parcels to grieving tsunami survivors in Sri Lanka and aircraft dropped food to isolated Indonesian towns yesterday as Asia's disaster relief operation struggled to cope.
Wealthy nations increased their aid contribution yesterday. President Bush said a $35 million US pledge for victims of the tsunami was only the beginning and any suggestions America was stingy were "misguided and ill-informed".
International aid teams landed in devastated villages to restore drinking water in a desperate race to prevent the spread of diseases, but in many remote areas - three days after a giant wave hit seven Asian nations killing more than 67,000 - people said aid was non-existent.
As the world pledged tens of millions of dollars in aid and sent an international flotilla of ships and aircraft with hundreds of tonnes of supplies, one of history's biggest relief operations struggled with the sheer enormity of the task.
The United Nations estimated that five million people were in need of desperate help to survive, with some island survivors living on just coconuts.
Ms Vaitai Usman, a woman in her mid-30s, gestured angrily at her filthy sarong, saying it was the last of her possessions, as the first relief teams arrived in Indonesia's Banda Aceh city.
"There is no food here whatsoever. We need rice, we need petrol, we need medicine. I haven't eaten in two days," she said.
Indonesia sent navy ships to the coast of Aceh, on the north of Sumatra island near the epicentre of the undersea quake which caused the tsunami, to contact towns still unheard from.
On the south coast of Sri Lanka, with more than 22,000 dead and 1.5 million homeless, people said there was still no sign of government aid where fishing villages have been wiped out.
"There is frighteningly little here," said Mr Chris Weeks, a director of the private Disaster Resource Network, in Colombo.
"There seems to be a lot of people who have turned up but not much in the way of tents and blankets and medical equipment."
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said disease could kill as many people as those killed by the wall of water.
"Standing water can be just as deadly as moving water" and the delivery of water-purification systems was paramount, UNICEF's executive director, Ms Carol Bellamy, said.
"The floods have contaminated the water systems, leaving people with little choice but to use unclean surface water.
"Under these conditions people will be hard put to protect themselves from cholera, diarrhoea and other deadly diseases," she said.
UNICEF has delivered 50 water tanks to southern India and has a 45-tonne shipment of water-purification tablets and water systems due to arrive in Sri Lanka today.
"We don't know how many people might die in the next days and weeks from disease caused primarily by bad water and sanitation conditions," Ms Bellamy said.
"But without doubt we know people will fall to disease. That's why it is essential that the relief campaign be focused on providing safe water right now."
The Red Cross and WHO said they had set up hundreds of temporary medical and relief camps across Sri Lanka to deliver their own aid.
They added however that conditions were overcrowded and ideal for respiratory infections, which could be fatal in children.
Reuters