Indonesia reassures aid workers after gunfire

Indonesia tried to reassure Western aid relief workers after a brief gunfire incident yesterday in the major tsunami aid base of Banda Aceh raised concern for their safety.

"The security operation conducted by Indonesia's military and police will protect, secure the humanitarian efforts," Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told reporters to allay concerns for the safety of the hundreds of Western aid workers pouring in.

Indonesia's military beefed up security in Aceh amid confusion over the shooting. Some officials blamed separatist rebels, and others said a disturbed government soldier had fired the shots. No one was hurt.

The incident took place outside a deputy police chief's house and near the main UN aid office in the capital of a province where almost all of Indonesia's 104,000 deaths from the tsunami occurred.

The tsunami - the most widespread natural disaster in living memory - killed at least 156,000 people in 13 countries around the Indian Ocean two weeks ago, drawing emergency relief from throughout the world.

"You have to proceed with due caution. This has been and is a zone of conflict," Aly-Kahn Rajami, programme manager of CARE International said after the shooting.

But Joel Boutroue, UN coordinator for Sumatra and chief of UN operations in Aceh, said: "We don't believe relief workers are targets. I don't see at this stage any hampering of our movement."

Indonesia's chief social welfare minister Alwi Shihab said the government was investigating. He said the military had ordered a high alert because of possible infiltration by people wary of the foreigners' presence.

There have been reports of militant Islamic groups moving into the province aiming to counter any use of the disaster by Western aid groups to push a Christian agenda.

In Sri Lanka, where 30,000 people died, President Chandrika Kumaratunga told BBC television that with reconstruction starting on Saturday, "we can certainly welcome tourists in three months, maximum four".

In New York, Carol Bellamy, executive director of UNICEF, the world body's children organisation, said health officials were moving against a possible outbreak of measles.

"There are some very small numbers of cases of measles that have been identified," she told CBS's "Face the Nation". "We need also to be worried about things like cholera or diarrhoea and therefore children becoming dehydrated.

"The good news is to date there has not been any major outbreak of disease," she added.

A huge undersea earthquake off the Aceh coast triggered the tsunami on December 26. Waves also killed 15,000 in India, more than 5,000 in Thailand and others in the Maldives, Myanmar, Bangladesh and several east African nations.

Governments and agencies pledged more than $5 billion in aid. Companies and individuals promised $1.5 billion more. Rich nations promised on Friday to suspend debt repayments by tsunami-hit nations, which may free resources for rebuilding.

US President George W. Bush urged Americans to keep opening their wallets.

In Sri Lanka, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the government should use the world's support to heal the country's ethnic divisions and end a civil war with Tamil rebels.

The government stopped him visiting tsunami-hit areas in the rebel-held north and east on Saturday.

"The world wants to help Sri Lanka," he said. "I hope Sri Lanka would use the support and the goodwill, not only to recover from this tragedy but as an opportunity to unite in the work for peace."

Around 7,500 foreign tourists are dead or unaccounted for, most of them in Thailand, where German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer visited a makeshift mortuary. International forensic experts are trying to identify bodies there.

In Australia, researchers said the Earth was still shaking from the earthquake off Aceh, the most powerful for 40 years.

"These are not things that are going to throw you off your chair," said Australian National University researcher Herb McQueen, "but it is certainly above the background level of vibrations that the earth is normally accustomed to."

Scientists say the quake may also have permanently sped the Earth's rotation - shortening days by a fraction of a second.