New Delhi, Dec. 28: The Centre today got down to providing the healing touch to tsunami survivors by deciding to give them liberal loans and instructing insurance companies to quickly settle their claims.

After a meeting this evening of the group of ministers set up to supervise relief and rehabilitation, the home and defence ministers said the government had also advised the states to quickly dispose of the bodies lest they lead to an epidemic.

Tamil Nadu ? that counted over 3,500 bodies by this morning ? had sent an SOS to the Centre for help with the disposal, officials said.

?The army has been asked to assist the state government in this sensitive task,? an official said.

Pondicherry, which has started disposing of bodies, has been advised to use the services of civil defence volunteers.

About 500 villages across 1,000 km of the Tamil Nadu coastline were hit by tsunamis up to 7 metres high that penetrated a kilometre into the mainland, according to the home ministry?s assessment.

As a mark of respect to the dead, President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam ? who has cancelled visits outside Delhi in view of the disaster ? called off New Year celebrations at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

About 200 tonnes of relief material has been sent to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, defence minister Pranab Mukherjee said.

The government, however, acknowledged that information about the fate of thousands in the Car Nicobar cluster was still hard to come by. ?All I can say is that the toll is going to be very high there,? a home official said.

Home minister Shivraj Patil said he had got ?different figures from different sources? about Car Nicobar casualties. ?We are still unclear about the total damage,? he added.

The ministers announced that Delhi had decided to give Rs 100 crore in assistance to Sri Lanka and Rs 5 crore to Maldives.

But there were clear indications that the Centre was not inclined to accept the BJP demand to classify the tsunami tragedy as a ?national disaster? and thus take sole responsibility for carrying out relief and rehabilitation.