The sea took everything, says asylum-seeker who lost his wife and more than 100 relatives

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Sinnathamby Ponniah's family have lived in the southern Sri Lankan village of Alliyawalai for 15 generations. Traumatised after years of civil war, they thought it was their fellow man that posed the biggest threat. But it was nature that was their undoing. "The sea snatched everything," the former fisherman now living in Britain said yesterday as he explained how more than 100 of his relatives, including his wife, Nagalauxmy, 32, and two daughters, Yasintha, 13, and Yasotha, 11, were lost in the tsunami which followed the Indian Ocean earthquake on Boxing Day. His 15-year-old son, Thanis, was one of the extended family's few survivors, eluding death by grabbing hold of a tree. It was three days before his father knew he was safe and a further two before they could talk to each other. Gone, however, are brothers, sisters, parents, cousins and grandparents. From the village's population of 17,000, some 3,000 are confirmed dead. Another 2,500 are still missing, with little hope they will be found.