A man dashes to safety in Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu on Thursday. (Reuters)

Nagapattinam, Dec. 30: Toddlers in their arms, they fled.

Some fell, tripped by the rush of legs, then got up again and ran. Others packed into cars and buses, into whatever they could get on ? auto-rickshaws, mini vans ? to get away from another deadly cycle of waves.

?It?s coming,? shouted a man as he ran. ?We saw what happened here. I don?t want to stay?. I?m not mad.?

Residents of tsunami-swamped Tamil Nadu?s worst-hit district today fled in hundreds as a fresh alert triggered panic and halted relief work.

The flight of fear began barely an hour after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh?s aerial survey of affected areas.

On the Nagapattinam-Tiruvarur road, people walked in groups, children on their shoulders. ?There are no state-run buses plying on the roads. So we have set out on foot as people asked us to vacate and go more 2 km away from the shoreline,? said Selvi, who had a child in her arms.

Selvi and her husband, with the rest of their family, began walking from the pilgrim centre of Velankanni to Tiruvarur, a distance of 33 km, soon after the alert was sounded. The warning came on a day people had started trickling back to their homes.

?Only this morning, the affected people ? mostly fishermen and daily causal workers ? had started returning to Nagapattinam to look for what remained of their homes and also as chief minister Jayalalithaa was to formally inaugurate relief distribution here,? said Ravi, a fisherman.

Nearly 2,000 people waited at Akkarapet, the worst-hit pocket in Nagapattinam, for Jayalalithaa to arrive. ?Suddenly, someone came and announced that a warning had come from Delhi about a fresh tsunami strike. In an instant, people started fleeing,? said Ravi.

Some state ministers were also seen fleeing moments after the warning was flashed over All India Radio and police sirens blared on beaches and in coastal hamlets.