Thousands fill mass graves

Indian men stand exhausted after searching for missing relatives at Silver Beach in Cuddalore,south of Madras yesterday. PHOTO: AFP

Thousands of people were moving back from the coast in fear further big waves like those that swept men, women and children out to sea on Sunday.

In Cuddalore, one of the worst-affected fishing villages where hundreds died, the authorities were conducting mass funerals.

Cranes dug mass graves and men heaped wood for cremations at makeshift funeral grounds

Relatives carried corpses into the pits, lining up the dead alongside each other.

Those with the means cremated their loved ones, according to Hindu tradition.

Many of the dead were fishermen who had set out to sea, or their families living in flimsy shacks along the beaches.

"Mother, what's happened? I saw you yesterday and now you're here. You're not dead. Please come back," implored one woman.

Another stood at a grave, calling out to her mother who had been buried, saying, "I want to come with you."

The stench of death could be smelt up to a kilometer away (more than half a mile) from the beach where rescue workers toiled for a second day to fish the dead from the seas.

One man, in Cuddalore, spotting the corpse of his eight-year-old son, collapsed on the sand, wailing inconsolably. The boy's mother rolled on the ground screaming and beating her chest.

Another man sat on the sand cradling his elderly mother's body.

Beaches were still littered with mangled cars, bicycles and boats, some of which were hurled 1.5 kilometers (nearly a mile) from their normal berths, testifying to the power of the waves, up to 10-meters (30-foot) high, that hit unannounced.

Two hours' drive down the coast, the district of Nagapattinam suffered the heaviest death toll in Tamil Nadu -- about 1,700 dead, many of them children, police said.

Corpses littered the district's villages where fishermen and their families had lived off the sea for generations.

"Water has taken away my family, water has taken away my family," wailed Anbalakhan in the wrecked village of Karambambari. Her husband, son and two daughters were killed by the tidal waves.

The popular tourist state of Kerala reported at least 143 people dead.

Policemen herded people back from the beach where they had been looking for missing relatives and friends.