The death toll from the remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Indian Ocean could rise as high as 15,000, aid agencies warned as survivors described how they had lived on wild potatoes while waiting for rescue in the jungle.
Some 10,000 people, about half the population of Car Nicobar, the worst affected island, were still missing yesterday. On other islands such as Little Andaman witnesses reported that crocodiles had started eating bodies that were floating in the water.
"I would say that the death toll is around 15,000 from the islands of the south. This is based on a collection of reports from doctors," said Mr Hoslo Jiwa, of the Greenlife Society, a charity that works with the islands' wildlife and tribal populations.
The relief effort in the archipelago, which is made up of 572 islands, 36 of them inhabited, has been hampered by their remoteness.
In the capital Port Blair, the islands' lieutenant governor, Mr Ram Kapse, said the official death toll stood at more than 3,000 but he was hopeful that some survivors were still in the jungle.
But six days after the disaster it seems increasingly likely that most of the 10,000 people missing from Car Nicobar, a low-lying island that bore the full force of Sunday's giant wave, are now dead.
Yesterday Mr Michael Paul, a police constable who was stationed on Chaura Island, said he and others had survived by eating jungle potatoes.
From his hospital bed in Port Blair, he said it took rescuers two days to arrive.
"The wave knocked me over and a wall fell on top of me." Some 500 people had now been taken off the island but another 900 had not been accounted for, he added.
Another patient at the island's hospital said he had clung to a palm tree in the sea. "I spent the evening in the water," Hilary (14) from Car Nicobar said. "My mother and brother were both drowned." Yesterday Indian naval officials claimed that the archipelago's nearly extinct aboriginal populations had survived the tsunami.
The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are home to five tribal groups, including the Sentinelese, a tribe of hunter-gatherers who fiercely resist all contact with the outside world.
Yesterday Vice Commodore Arun Singh said the tribe appeared to have survived. He said an Indian naval helicopter had spotted them sitting on the beach of North Sentinel Island.
The helicopter had not landed. "You can't approach Sentinel Island. I tried it in 1978. They fired arrows at me," he said.
The other tribes, including the Onges, Great Andamanese, Jarwas and Shompens, were all still there, he said.
In other parts of the archipelago, the news was worse. There has been no trace of four scientists studying giant leatherback turtles at Indira Point, India's most southerly tip on Great Nicobar island.
They and 16 to 20 families living next to the lighthouse there had disappeared, said Insp Gen S.B. Deol.
"We tried but failed to find the families or the scientists. Since Indira Point is just 140 km away from Sumatra, the tsunami waves perhaps did not give them any chance," he told the Calcutta Telegraph.
The tsunami caused extensive destruction on Little Andaman, flattening a settlement on the east side called Hut Bay.