APIA, Samoa, Oct 3 (AFP) - Samoa is planning a mass burial for victims of the tsunami that devastated the Pacific island earlier this week, the government said Friday, as the death toll from the disaster crept towards 200.
Many families were already burying their loved ones in unmarked graves on high ground less ravaged by Tuesday's walls of water that wiped out coastal settlements, but Samoa has offered a mass funeral for around 100 others.
“The government has met with the families of the dead and made the offer of a national burial and is offering a place for all those victims to be buried together,” government press secretary Uale Papalii Paimalelagi told AFP.
“Some of the victims have already been taken by their families and buried, so we expect around 100 to be laid to rest in the mass burial,” he said, adding it was up to relatives to accept the offer, but most had agreed.
The ceremony is tentatively planned for Tuesday, but may be postponed at the request of families to allow time for overseas relatives to arrive, the office of Women, Village Council and Social Development Minister Fiame Mataafa Naomi said.
The mass burial plans were revealed as the number of those feared dead in the region reached at least 180, with officials warning it would rise further.
Following the tsunami spawned by a massive, 8.0-magnitude undersea quake, at least 139 people were feared dead in Samoa, with 129 confirmed killed and 10 missing. Another 32 were confirmed dead in neighbouring American Samoa and nine in Tonga, about 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) away. |
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