COLOMBO, 30 December 2004 — Sri Lanka pressed its entire public service and the military into an unprecedented relief operation yesterday as it grappled with the magnitude of cleaning up after its worst disaster.

Relief coordinator Tilak Ranavirajah who was appointed overnight to lead the mammoth effort following Sunday’s tsunamis that wiped out swathes of coastline, said systems were overloaded.

He conceded that officials were still trying to come to grips with scale of the task ahead.

“We can’t even think of guessing the size of the destruction,” Ranavirajah told AFP. “The priority is to get the supplies to the people in most need. We have the entire public service and the military mobilized for the job.”

He said there were conflicting reports on the death toll with a police body count placing the figure at about 9,000 while estimates from district placed the death toll at over 18,000.

“The police are going strictly by the body count,” he said. “But, there are places where we have not cleared some of the houses flooded by the waves. The toll, therefore could go up, but we can’t put a precise figure on it yet.”

He said the focus of the government was taking care of survivors. The authorities had sent some relief convoys that had already reached the rebel-held north and east of the island, but more were needed and on the way. The air force carried out round-the-clock sorties dropping food on thousands who were marooned.

Combat aircraft were pressed into dropping relief supplies while the authorities awaited more helicopters from India to join the effort.

Trucks were just getting through to the southern coastal areas where many people have had nothing or very little to eat in the past three days as overturned cars and other vehicles and debris from homes blocked road access.

Ranavirajah admitted they had difficulties in getting aid through to the remote areas and said they also decided to turn down public offers of cooked food as transportation and delivery had become a nightmare.

“We say no to cooked food, but we welcome dry rations, cooking utensils, mats, lamps and things like that,” Ranavirajah said.

Sri Lanka also asked Israel to scale down a medical team but to go ahead with sending urgent supplies to treat survivors.

“What we did was to tell them not to go ahead with plans to send 150 medical personnel,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman said. “We have adequate medical and rescue personnel, but not enough accommodation.”

The spokesman said that 10 Israeli medical personnel were already in the island helping in the relief effort along with teams from France, Russia, Spain, India, Turkey, Japan, UN agencies and the International Red Cross.