An Indonesian family claims to have found their missing daughter a full decade after she was swept away as a toddler by the 2004 tsunami.
their village in West Aceh on 26 December 2004, Jamaliah said she and her husband, Septi Rangkuti, 52, ran for safety but couldn’t escape the water. Her husband found a large wooden board and put the two youngest children on top of it
Septi was separated from his children in the mayhem and the parents spent a month looking for them after the tsunami .
More than 170,000 people in Aceh, and tens of thousands of others in other countries around the Indian Ocean, were killed by the Boxing Day tragedy.
until in June Jamaliah’s brother spotted a girl who looked like missing daughter Raudhatul.
He asked local villagers about the girl and discovered that she had been orphaned by the tsunami. She was rescued by a local fisherman and taken back to the fisherman’s house, where he spent the last decade raising her as “Wenni” with his ageing mother.
“The girl’s face resembles mine,” she added, claiming that she was willing to take a DNA test to confirm the girl’s identity. “When I hugged her, she hugged me back and felt very comfortable in my embrace.”
Daughter Raudhatul returned home to live in West Aceh with her parents on Wednesday.
But the arrival of Raudhatul may bring even more good news. The girl, now 14, says that she and her older brother Arif, who is still missing, both survived the tsunami .
“My instinct tells me he’s still alive,” she says of her son.