COLOMBO, 16 January 2005 — The fifth planeload of relief materials from the Kingdom arrived here yesterday. The Saudi ambassador in Colombo, Mohamed Mahmud Al-Ali, said: “We want these goods to reach all victims irrespective of religion and we also want to ensure that all afflicted communities get their share of help and assistance.”

The ambassador was at the airport to receive the latest shipment. He arranged with the Colombo office of the International Islamic Relief Organization ((IIRO) to deliver half the consignment to Muslim settlements in the Amparai district. In that area, more than 10,000 people were killed and 30,000 left homeless.

The director of the Colombo office of the IIRO, Mohamed Naufer Siddeek, the director of supplies for the Saudi Red Crescent, Hamad Al-Ajaji, and other Saudi Embassy officials were also at the airport.

The Saudi Embassy earlier handed over the first two relief shipments to the Ministry of Social Services, the third consisting of medicines was given to the Ministry of Health and the fourth sent to Hambantota where the victims were from all three major communities.

In response to complaints that aid was slow in reaching some affected areas, Siddeek admitted that there had been problems in getting the shipments to the affected areas. Yesterday, however, the IIRO sent tents, bedding, carpets, dry rations, 10 megawatt power generators to Muslim areas such as Kalmunai, Maruthamunai, Sainthamaruthu, Akkaraipattu, Kalmunai, Kinniya, Muttur, Kattankudy, Hambantota and Galle.

An IIRO team headed by the director of IIRO for West Asia, Sulaiman Al-Saqry, distributed relief materials to most of the affected areas. In addition, the IIRO also built toilets and latrines.

Al-Saqry, who left Sri Lanka yesterday, said another IIRO team would visit the areas immediately after the Haj holidays and carry out additional relief work. He pointed out that the local IIRO office in Colombo was working out a rehabilitation program for survivors which would be implemented soon.

Meanwhile, thousands of Sri Lankans took advantage of a long weekend yesterday to tramp through wreckage left by the tsunami as hoteliers reported a surge in “disaster tourism.”

Along the western, southern and parts of the eastern coasts, badly hit by the Dec. 26 disaster, carloads of Sri Lankans and some foreigners were seen taking pictures of each other in front of wrecked buildings, twisted railway lines and devastated landscapes.

Fathers told their children to walk past scenes of destruction, or of workers clearing mounds of rubble, while they set the video cameras rolling. Like visitors to a game park, where sightings of animals by one group draw every other jeep in sight, tourists have been arriving in droves at the flooded salt pans near Hambantota, a lake-cleaning operation further up the road and at relief camps dotted across the coastline.

In Kirinda, 269 km from Colombo, already on the local tourist route because of an important Buddhist temple, the main attraction is a house lacking a facade and with two boats rammed into a room on the second floor.

Locals say that onsite inspections of the wreckage is carried out by many on their way to the Rajamaha Vihara temple, which has become even more popular because it honors Princess Viharamahadevi, who according to local legend survived a tsunami that washed over parts of Sri Lanka about 2,000 years ago after her father, the king, pushed her out to sea in a boat as a sacrifice to calm the waves.

Along the west coast, the wreckage of a train at Thelwatta in which at least 1,300 people died when it was engulfed by the tsunami, is a favorite spot for snap-happy tourists.

— Additional input from agencies