Indonesian workers cleaning up debris of the Dec. 26 tsunami found 897 more bodies, raising the confirmed death toll from the tragedy to 111,171, the government said Thursday. The number of missing remains 127,749, said the government's National Disaster Relief Coordinating Board in a statement. Most of the missing are feared dead but can't be legally declared such for a year. It said authorities found 897 more bodies in Aceh province on Wednesday and buried them, raising the confirmed death toll in the area to 111,043. In addition, 128 people died in a neighboring province for a confirmed total death toll of 111,171. Indonesian Welfare Minister Alwi Shihab has predicted the body count would continue to rise for weeks as retrieval teams are finding an average of 500 bodies a day during cleanup operations.
