Indonesia told aid workers helping tsunami victims in its worst-hit region, Aceh, on Tuesday not to venture beyond two large cities on Sumatra island because of what it said were militant threats. Indonesia's head of relief operations said agencies would need permission to work outside the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, and the ravaged west coast town of Meulaboh. Asked if Aceh was unsafe for international aid workers, Budi Atmaji said: "Yes, in some places."
However, separatist rebels said they would never attack aid workers - who in turn said they were not overly worried.
Interpol in historic identification
Interpol and 20 national police forces launched history's biggest disaster victim identification system to unravel the mesh of forensic data from the bodies, hundreds of which were to be exhumed for checks after hasty burials right after the tsunami.
Adding to the anguish of relatives, experts at the makeshift police headquarters on the tsunami-hit island of Phuket said putting names to all the corpses - cross-referencing dental records, fingerprints and DNA from bodies and from the missing - could take months.
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