THAILAND: Water churning "like a washing machine" swept away Patrice Gicquel's wife, daughter and twin babies when the Indian Ocean tsunami slammed into their beach resort in southern Thailand.
Six months later, he stands in the gutted Sofitel resort at Khao Lak, a strip of white beaches and luxury hotels where most of Thailand's 5,395 deaths occurred, hoping a renewed search will find the body of his 22-month-old son.
"I have no idea why I'm still alive. It's a mystery to me," Mr Gicquel said as highly trained French sniffer dogs scoured the ruined hotel and nearby mangrove forests where bodies may be still be buried under the mud.
"My pain is huge. I want to find my son and bury him," he added. Mr Gicquel has returned seven times since the 9m (30ft) waves wrecked the five-star hotel on December 26th.
More than 200 guests and staff were killed.
"I was with my family and then it was just like a washing machine and I was swept out of the room," said the food company executive, who helped form a victim support group to pressurise the French government to continue the search for bodies.
His seven-year-old daughter's body was found quickly, but it was almost three months before the remains of his wife and 22-month-old daughter were recovered.
The other twin baby, Arthur, is still missing.
Under pressure from grieving families, search teams from Germany, France and Nordic countries which suffered the highest losses at Khao Lak have returned to its shattered hotels and debris-strewn mangrove fields to look again.
They are part of the world's largest forensics operation involving experts from 16 countries who have identified 1,710 bodies as of Monday, 1,552 of them foreigners.
Some 1,985 bodies remain unidentified and more than 2,900 people are listed as missing, including 287 foreigners.
The search for remains was officially called off months ago, but resumed in May at selected sites in Khao Lak.
"Some families have raised concerns and we have listened to their concerns," said British detective Derek Forest, co-commander of the disaster victim identification (DVI) centre.
Mr Forest sympathised with the families' need for closure, but some bodies may never be found, including those swept out to sea, he said.
For the roughly 2,000 missing Thais, the government is considering declaring them dead to allow families to forgo a two-year waiting period and claim inheritances and benefits.
The DVI centre, which has enough funding for the rest of the year after donor governments were lambasted for a cash shortfall last month, is entering its toughest phase.
After relying mainly on dental records and fingerprints, the teams face a bigger challenge in analysing DNA samples taken from bodies exposed to days of salt water and tropical heat.
They have sent bone and tissue samples to Sarajevo-based war crimes investigators, the International Commission on Missing Persons, after prior testing by other laboratories failed.
But some of the dead may never be known.
"It's a distinct possibility that a very small number of bodies may never be identified and with the vast number of bodies that we're dealing with here, that has to be recognised as a reality," said Mr Forest.
The French team is the first to use sniffer dogs to search the mangroves, where snakes are a constant threat.
The dogs, a German shepherd named Trex and a Belgian shepherd named Pyrus, can only work 20-minute shifts in the intense heat. They crawl through spaces under the hotel jammed with mud and debris.
A German team recently used sophisticated detection gear to search around the hotel, but much of the grim work is done by hand. "It's a hot, dirty job," said French engineer Yves Martin.
"Sometimes we find ID papers or photographs, a child's medallion, shoes," he said. - (Reuters)