Sri Lankan bishop reports more than 1,000 dead in his diocese

Published: 2004-12-29

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (CNS) -- The huge wall of water that hit southern and eastern Sri Lanka left more than 1,000 people dead in one eastern Catholic diocese, said a Sri Lankan bishop. Bishop Joseph Kingsley Swampillai of Trincomalee-Batticaloa said Dec. 28 more bodies still needed to be extracted from debris the waves dumped inland, and many others remained missing. "The situation is still the same; there are no homes for the people in addition to the destruction of churches and temples -- nothing has been spared," he told UCA News, an Asian church news agency based in Thailand. Church and government workers struggled to deal with the death and destruction caused by the Dec. 26 tsunami that slammed the country's coasts. The most severely affected areas were in the dioceses of Galle, covering the southernmost part of the island, and neighboring Trincomalee-Batticaloa, which stretches along most of the eastern coast.

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