BANDA ACEH - 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, her parents said Friday.
Mary Yuranda, now 14, showed up at a cafe in the city of Meulaboh, a city 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 religious leader in the village, said her father, 42.
"The birthmarks on her belly, and a mole and scar on her face proved that the little girl was mine," her mother Yusnidar told AFP by telephone from the village home.
"I cannot tell you how grateful I am," the 35-year-old mother said.
Yusnidar was separated from two of her three children when the tsunami wreaked havoc on the Aceh coast and killed more than three-quarters of the 220,000 victims around the Indian Ocean.
Her eldest daughter remains missing, she said.
Indonesia was the nation hardest hit in the 2004 tsunami, with more than three-quarters of the 220,000 victims around the Indian Ocean.