Indonesian girl back home 7 years after tsunamiTweet

An Indonesian girl separated from her family during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami has been reunited with her family after seven years as a street child.

Mary Yuranda, now 14, showed up at a cafe in the city of Meulaboh in Aceh province, looking for her parents.

According to her father Tarmius, she told her parents she had finally been let go by a woman who had taken her in and forced her to work as a street beggar.

A taxi driver helped her return home on Wednesday after she told him the names of her village and her grandfather, a well-known local religious leader, said her father.

"The birthmarks on her belly, and a mole and scar on her face proved that the little girl was mine," said her mother Yusnidar.

"I cannot tell you how grateful I am," she added.

Yusnidar was separated from two of her three children when the tsunami caused devastation on the Aceh coast.

Her eldest daughter remains missing, she said.

Indonesia was home to more than three-quarters of the 220,000 victims of the tsunami around the Indian Ocean.

Source AFP