The number of survivors in need of food aid after the Indian Ocean tsunami has soared to 1.8 million people stretching from Somalia to Thailand, and the figure could rise further, the United Nations said on Sunday. Relief teams hope to reach all of the estimated 700,000 hungry in Sri Lanka within three more days but it could take longer before enough food aid gets to nearly 1 million in need in hard-to-reach parts of Indonesia, U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland said. The numbers could go up because new assessments were in the works for remote parts of Somalia in northeastern Africa and the Maldives, a South Asian nation made up of more than 220 inhabited islands, he said. At the same time, contributions to the relief effort of cash and goods now total more than $2 billion, Egeland said, adding however that still more helicopters, trucks and other heavy equipment would be useful, "the hardware to do the moving, the shaking, the lifting." With the need so great and growing daily, the effort was still gearing up but making regular strides in assessing needs and coordinating and distributing goods and services, he said. "Overall I am more optimistic today than I was yesterday, and especially the day before yesterday, that the global community will be able to face up to this enormous challenge," Egeland told a news briefing.
