SURVIVORS

Tsunami survivors found on island

The remote islands are home to aboriginal tribesNine people who survived the Asian tsunami have been found on an Indian island after 38 days of living on coconuts, police say. A police party making a random check found five men, three children and one woman in a remote part of Campbell Bay, an island in the Andaman archipelago. The nine, all of them emaciated, are Nicobari aboriginals, Campbell Bay's police chief said. They were the sole survivors out of a community of about 150. The group was found 39 kilometres (24 miles) from the island's naval base. Describing the nine's survival as a miracle, police chief Shaukat Ali said they had lived off coconuts and coconut milk since the disaster. Campbell Bay, in the Andaman and Nicobar chain which is close to Thailand, was one of the islands worst hit by the giant waves.
Almost 2,000 people have been listed as dead and 555 as missing, mostly from the island of Katchal.
Sole survivors
Police officers scouting the island by boat spotted the survivors waving to them from a point called Pillowbhabhi, police official BB Choudhury told the BBC. He and his colleagues reached the shore in small rubber boats and found the nine. The survivors told the police party that they had been swept into the sea by the tsunami and then were thrown back on the beaches two days later.
A week ago another survivor, named as Michael Mangal, was found in another island.
He too had survived on coconuts.

THIS IS A BBC REPORT