Wed Dec 29, 6:18 AM ET

By GEMUNU AMARASINGHE, Associated Press Writer

YALA NATIONAL PARK, Sri Lanka - Wildlife officials in Sri Lanka expressed surprise Wednesday that they found no evidence of large-scale animal deaths from the weekend's massive tsunami - indicating that animals may have sensed the wave coming and fled to higher ground.


An Associated Press photographer who flew over Sri Lanka's Yala National Park in an air force helicopter saw abundant wildlife, including elephants, buffalo, deer, and not a single animal corpse.

Floodwaters from the tsunami swept into the park, uprooting trees and toppling cars onto their roofs - one red car even ended up on top of a huge tree - but the animals apparently were not harmed and may have sought out high ground, said Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne, whose Jetwing Eco Holidays ran a hotel in the park.

"This is very interesting. I am finding bodies of humans, but I have yet to see a dead animal," said Wijeyeratne, whose hotel in the park was totally destroyed in Sunday's tidal surge.

"Maybe what we think is true, that animals have a sixth sense," Wijeyeratne said.

Yala, Sri Lanka's largest wildlife reserve, is home to 200 Asian Elephants, crocodile, wild boar, water buffalo and gray langur monkeys. The park also has Asia's highest concentration of leopards. The Yala reserve covers an area of 391 square miles, but only 56 square miles are open to tourists.

The human death toll in Sri Lanka surpassed 21,000. Forty foreigners were among 200 people in Yala who were killed.

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Udara

Alladin Hussein in Colombo, December 27, 2004, 11.57 p.m.. Sri Lankan authorities have begun mass burials of all unidentified bodies, unconfirmed reports said. With more than 12,000 believed to have died due to the disastrous tidal waves which engulfed Sri Lanka yesterday, only several thousand bodies have been identified. Many of the hospitals don’t even have clean cloth to wrap the bodies of the dead and bury. Earlier yesterday officials requested the public to present white cloth to bury the Muslims, according to their religious rites within 24 hours of dying. “Everything had been washed away and there isn’t even white cloth to wrap the dead bodies and bury,” officials said. Hospital sources also said that it was advisable to start burying all unidentified bodies as soon as possible, as the more they lie around, the more the chances of deadly diseases spreading. Sources also noted that relatives are refusing to go though the excruciating procedure of trying to identify their loved ones among the hundreds of dead lying in hospitals.

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Udara

Alladin Hussein in Colombo, December 27, 2004, 2.00 a.m.. Sri Lanka experienced the deadly tsunami waves after more than 2000 years, reports said. Government officials lamented that if Sri Lanka was on the International Coordination Group for the Tsunami Warning System then the impact would not have been this ‘terrible’. “We cannot prevent natural disasters, but we can minimize their impact,” he said. The Tsunami system predicts where tsunamis will strike up to 14 hours in advance.
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka is short of doctors to treat the thousands of injured, while hospitals are also short of medical supplies to treat the injured. The Government Medical Officers Unions and the Health Ministry a little while back urged all doctors, including those who practice privately, medical students, and nurses to come and assist them in treating the injured. It is also reported that in the Eastern province, authorities don’t even have cloth to wrap the dead bodies and bury them.