U.S. navy hospital ship ends Indonesia mission

A U.S. navy hospital ship will leave Indonesia’s quake-hit Nias island on Saturday, marking a final farewell by U.S. troops involved in Indonesian disaster relief work, the U.S. embassy said.

The 270-metre (890-ft) Mercy arrived in Indonesia with the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln after the December 26 Indian Ocean tsunami that left more than 160,000 Indonesians dead or missing.

The ship ended in March a one-month mission in Aceh province, the region hardest hit by the tsunami, and was on a humanitarian operation off Indonesia’s eastern island of Alor when a deadly earthquake struck Nias on March 28.

Since arriving on April 5, doctors in the 1,000-bed ship performed 123 surgeries and conducted more than 19,000 medical procedures at Nias, the embassy said in a statement on Friday.

The U.S. military contributed one of the largest troop contingents, numbering in the thousands, to relief efforts in Aceh following the tsunami.

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