Eyewitness: Remote tragedies

By Geeta Pandey BBC News, Car Nicobar, Andaman islands

Tourism brochures describe Car Nicobar as a flat fertile island, surrounded by enchanting beaches with a roaring sea all around.

The Car Nicobar air force base - 100 people died here

But now, all these enchanting beaches have disappeared - a casualty of last week's killer tsunami.

When the tsunami struck Car Nicobar island on 26 December, the Indian air force base was its first stop.

It was completely flattened.

As most people here slept, the ground was pulled away from under their feet.

The waves of the sea - where their children had taken much delight in running barefoot - sucked them into its womb.

The water rose by twelve metres and few could escape it fury.

A hundred people died here, more than half of them were air force officers and their families.

The air force officer who showed us around said there was a sandy beach here, 200 metres long.

But today all around me are uprooted trees, hundreds, maybe thousands of them.

The sea waves continue to wash over the debris of the buildings.

Personal belongings are strewn about - a music keyboard lies by the roadside.

Grief pours out

As we travel to our next destination, Malacca village, a few kilometres from the air force base, there's plenty of evidence of nature's fury.

Whole villages have disappeared, forcing the residents of take shelter in tents along the road.

In Kaakna village, a group of women wash clothes by the road side, men draw water from a shallow well.

And grief comes pouring out...

Keefus lost his home and everything else he had.

He and his wife survived and managed to save their five- month-old baby.

But his other two children were swept away.

"They were seven and twelve," he says, "My wife's inconsolable."

Household debris

At Malacca village it's difficult to imagine what this place would have looked like in happier times.

Displaced tribals from Malacca village

Here also the waters rose 12 metres.

Surrounded by coconut palms on all sides, every house is now just rubble.

The only thing that stands - surprisingly untouched - is a memorial to the father of the Indian nation, Mahatma Gandhi.

In the debris lie various household articles - clothes, pillows, colourful plastic buckets, a grammar book for high school, a child's shoe.

There is an overpowering stench of burning flesh.

Some of us are handed out face masks by the soldiers, others have to make do with handkerchiefs.

A senior army officer tells us his team has recovered seven bodies today.

A mass cremation is in progress, we see the fires burn from a distance.

We are warned against going any closer to the area - cooking gas cylinders buried in the debris explode at regular intervals.

'Lost everything'

A thousand-odd members of the Nicobarese tribal group from Malacca who survived are trying to pick up the pieces of their life again.

The defence authorities have set up tents along the roadside where they are getting some relief.

Keefus and his wife lost two young children to the sea

Herbert Sen is the village leader. "I'm still gathering my people," he says.

We ask him what more he needs now.

"We have no facility to store water. We need tanks for that. Also, we need more ration and clothes for some people."

He points at some men who are dressed only in shorts: "Look, some people here have lost everything. They don't even have a shirt."

'Still isolated'

At the airstrip in Car Nicobar, relief supplies are being unloaded from a military aircraft.

It will take this land and its battered people years to recover from it all

The chief of the defence forces in the Andaman and Nicobar, Lieutenant General Bhupendra Singh Thakur, says the relief and rescue operations are in full swing.

But he admits that more than a week after the disaster, help hasn't reached some.

"We have now been able to come to grips with the problem but there are some areas south of Campbell Bay which are still marooned, they are still isolated.

"But we are in the process of establishing contact with them. There are three ships with two helicopters operating close to the area, we are sending another one soon and very soon we'll be able to evacuate these people."

Lieutenant general Thakur says the number of these people is close to 450.

Back at the air force base, the rescuers are still digging for bodies.

One of them spots a body. "It's a woman," he shouts, "She's wearing a sari."

They begin pulling it out from the debris.

Officials say for every body found in Car Nicobar, several have been swept away by the waves without leaving a trace.

This is where the tsunami struck the hardest.

It will take this land and its battered people years to recover from it all.