A woman cries at the grave of a tsunami victim in Manalkadu village, Sri Lanka, yesterday. Mourners from across the world wept, prayed and observed moments of silence along ravaged Indian Ocean coastlines yesterday to remember those killed by one of nature's deadliest disasters. - REUTERS
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP):
SOMALIS SAID prayers in mosques along their Indian Ocean coastline for more than 30,000 survivors left homeless and without livelihoods by the tsunami that traversed the sea from Asia.
Presidential spokesman Yusuf Ismail said yesterday that many were still wondering what had happened to promised aid.
He said services were held in mosques in memory of the 289 people who disappeared when the giant wave slammed into Somalia's north-east coast a year ago, but the question high in many minds was why more help had not come.
SLEEPING IN THE OPEN
"People are still living in very precarious conditions," Ismail said. Many victims still do not have homes, with some sleeping on mats in the open and others overcrowding the homes of friends, relatives and clansmen, he added.
People in the Horn of Africa nation wonder why the international community wasted money on an expensive fact-finding mission.
"People say even that money alone could have made some difference," Ismail said by telephone in neighbouring Kenya. "Unfortunately the international community, apart from a few organisations, has not responded in the way people were promised to expect.
OTHER VICTIMS
Other African victims include 11 dead in Tanzania, two dead in the Seychelles islands and one dead in Kenya.
In Somalia, entire fishing villages were destroyed and some 600 boats were smashed or carried away to sea. Private organisations have provided only a few dozen boats in the year since disaster hit.
The tsunami was just another in many tragedies confronting Somalia, a nation of 8.2 million that has been without a functioning government since a 1991 coup toppled a dictatorship. War-lords have carved the country into fiefdoms, and drought, a cyclone and ongoing fighting have left tens of thousands homeless, hungry and beyond safe reach of aid workers.
