Aid agencies have criticised the Indian government for hindering the arrival of aid in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, hard hit by the Boxing Day tsunamis.

The low-lying coral atolls, where 818 people are confirmed dead and 5,681 are listed as missing, are the site of a top secret Indian military spy station.

Oxfam and Medecins Sans Frontieres have so far been refused access by the government to the more remote islands in the 500 island archipelago.

Only a handful of Indian volunteer groups and government officials have been allowed access, where they are conducting a laborious island-by-island search for the missing, feared buried under mud and debris. Survivors are being ferried away from their shattered communities to Port Blair, the capital of the island group, where aid agencies are allowed to operate.

Shaheen Nilofer, Oxfam's programme manager for East India, said: "This closed-door approach is delaying relief efforts. Valuable time has been lost because of this delay.

"Relief should have reached the doorsteps of the people, and it was possible to do so rather than shunting them all here.

"[India is] accelerating the miseries of the poor people. If you don't take care of the survivors, the number of deaths can far outnumber the deaths from the tsunami."

Today there were reports of food and water shortages on the islands, and of unrest at the failure of aid to arrive in the worst affected areas. Hundreds of fishermen protested outside a fishery office after reports that they would not be allowed to put to sea for fear that they caught fish which had been feeding on human corpses.

"We can't even sell fish that we caught before the earthquake," protested Sorada Mdhav Rao, 55, the president of the Fishermen's Welfare Association in the island group.

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