The U.S. military said yesterday it expected to end major relief work within two weeks in tsunami-hit Thailand and Sri Lanka, where nine grieving moms continued to lay claim to an infant survivor.
As the death toll from the Asian disaster rose over 160,000, the battle over the months-old foundling in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo has become a symbol for the bottomless grief suffered after the Dec. 26 cataclysm.
The child was the 81st admission at the hospital on the day the deadly wave washed away his short history.
Now, “81” drinks from a bottle of milk and kicks at a pink blanket as the nine desperate women fight over him.
They all claim the child was torn from them by the tsunami, which killed more than 30,000 people in Sri Lanka alone.
One man standing outside the nursery at Kalmunai Base Hospital threatened to kill himself and his wife if they were not given the baby, who appears to be about 3 or 4 months old.
And a woman at the hospital said she would kill the doctors unless she got him.
The United Nations says nearly 1,000 children may have been orphaned by the tsunami in Sri Lanka, and more than 10,000 people were killed in the Ampara district alone, where the fight over the baby is taking place. With Post Wire Services