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28 December 2004
By Arjuna Wickramasinghe
COLOMBO (Reuters) - The Maldives has evacuated
13 of its 200 inhabited islands after a
tsunami flattened a host of idyllic resorts,
officials say, but the death toll is holding
at 55 -- a far cry from the thousands killed
in India and Sri Lanka.
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A
boat washed on to the pavement by
the waves
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President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom's office
said on Tuesday that rescue teams had evacuated
10,000 people from the worst hit of the
low-lying cluster of islands and appealed
for food and medicine after the giant waves
swept stores out to sea.
Officials said three British nationals
were among the dead and 69 people were still
missing, but the government finally made
contact with all island communities, who
were safe.
"Male got off with the least amount
of damage, but barring three islands in
the archipelago, all the other islands were
badly hit," said presidential spokesman
Mohamed Shareef.
"Communications with all the 200 inhabited
islands have now been restored, so that
is a relief," he added.
The Maldives, whose white sand beaches
and scuba diving are a magnet for honeymooners
and well-heeled tourists from around the
globe, declared a state of emergency on
Sunday after tsunami waves deluged the remote
island cluster and flooded two-thirds of
the capital, Male.
The chain of 1,200 tiny palm-fringed coral
islands dotted across 500 miles off the
toe of India lies just a few feet above
sea level, and many luxury hotels sit right
on the beach with wooden cabins on stilts
fanning out over limpid blue lagoons.
The Maldives' inhabited islands are home
on average to just a few hundred people
or house luxury tourist resorts which offer
some of South Asia's most expensive holiday
accommodation.
"We have 87 resorts and 20 have been
completely destroyed," Shareef said.
"We estimate the damage to property
and infrastructure to be over $1 billion
(520 million pounds). This is a big hit
on the economy."
"We have moved about 300 tourists
from these resorts since Sunday," he
added.
The international airport, which sits on
an island of its own a short boatride from
Male, was closed on Sunday as tsunami waves
wreaked havoc but was reopened later the
same day after water levels receded.
Gayoom has spent much of his 26 years in
power warning of the dangers that global
warming, erosion and shifting weather patterns
pose to low-lying island nations like his
own.
Most of the Maldives' 300,000 majority
Sunni Muslims are involved in the tourist
industry, the nation's economic backbone.
Male, which is 1.25 miles long and half
a mile wide and home to 75,000 people, was
badly flooded when the tsunami hit, with
residents forced to wade thigh-deep in seawater.
The island capital's streets of white-washed
houses are very cramped and there is little
communal open space for residents -- so
much so the government is building a new
island from scratch as an overflow.
The tsunami came just days ahead of December
31 parliamentary elections and it was not
immediately clear if the polls would be
delayed.
Note:
Tsunami
hits Maldives resorts
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