A relief worker who recently returned from Indonesia has described the horrific scenes of death and destruction he saw.Dr Saleh Al Taie of the UAE's Red Crescent Authority (RCA) told Gulf News yesterday the tsunami had left whole neighbourhoods in a worse state than some of the world's most notorious war zones.
"Every day they found 4,000 dead bodies. All the cities, all the island, were smelling of corpses," said the RCA's relief and emergency department manager.
"They are afraid of disease now. They do not have a way to reach all the places and remove all the dead. So the question now is how to clear the area of more than 100,000 bodies and 15 per cent of them are children."
Dr Al Taie arrived back in the UAE on Sunday, having spent 10 days distributing aid and assessing the damage throughout Indonesia.
After flying from Abu Dhabi to Jakarta, he stayed most of the time in Banda Aceh, a coastal city devastated by the tsunami.
In his five years with the RCA, Dr Al Taie has visited some of the world's worst trouble spots, including the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Afghanistan.
He told Gulf News yesterday the chaos in Indonesia was unprecedented.
"My first impression was that everybody was looking for bodies and everywhere smelt," he said.
"Everything in Sumatra was damaged; the markets, the shops. Only the mosques were still standing and now all the people are living in camps around the mosques."
Dr Al Taie, who helped distribute aid to the survivors of the massive earthquake that hit the Iranian city of Bam on December 26, 2003, said the problem faced by Indonesia is much bigger.
"I was shocked by what I saw last time I was in Bam, and this was far worse than that," he said. "In Bam, the buildings were damaged, but many people were safe. Here everything was damaged."
The RCA has been sending relief supplies to those countries hit by the tsunami. It is now planning a series of long-term projects in Indonesia to help the people recover.
Dr Al Taie said the RCA was hoping to build a 100-bed hospital in Aceh province and a "city for homeless children" that will include a mosque and a school.
"This is the next stage [for the Indonesian Government]," he said. "They need to find temporary or permanent housing for these people, but first they must bury the dead."
