governmental organization Johanniter, who said they had received information by telephone and from people who were traveling to the affected island areas on motorbikes, said some 400 people were confirmed dead and another 1,000 were missing underneath the rubble on Nias alone. This estimate did not include some areas which were still unreachable. "No one can go there now," said Marc Vachon, an aid worker with Johanniter, from Medan. "Even if you can get there, you can't go anywhere on the island." "From north to south there are so many bridges and so many of them have been damaged," he said. "There have been no reports at all from the west coast of Nias." As a result, the Indonesian military was performing most of the aid missions to Nias on Tuesday, bringing medicine and food supplies. The Indonesian military had flown helicopters with aid to the area, while the country's navy sent three warships to Nias, each carrying up 70-80 personnel to help the rescue workers. Advance teams from the health ministry had also been sent. The Indonesian armed forces (TNI) had deployed one battalion of troops to Nias to help evacuate residents, retrieve dead bodies and rescue survivors still trapped under rubble of collapsed houses and buildings. "For the first phase, we will deploy one battalion (of troops) today from North Sumatra military command to Nias," said TNI spokesman Colonel Achmad Yani Basuki. --more 1300 Local Time 1000 GMT
