Banda Aceh, Indonesia ? Haggard and dehydrated survivors of Asia’s tsunami catastrophe flooded hospitals in the disaster zone Tuesday, posing a new challenge for the global relief operation.

A 5.8-magnitude quake, the latest of numerous aftershocks stemming from the monstrous temblor that spawned the tsunami, rattled India’s Andaman Islands early Wednesday. There were no immediate reports of further injury or damage on the islands, which were hard hit by the killer waves.

As Secretary of State Colin Powell and other U.S. officials toured the region, the fragility of the aid network was exposed when a cargo plane hit a herd of cows on an Indonesian runway, temporarily shutting down an airport vital to the effort to feed and clothe the homeless.

Another gripping tale of survival emerged from the Dec. 26 disaster that killed an estimated 150,000 people and left 5 million in need. Officials said an Indonesian man swept out to sea was found alive, afloat on tree branches and debris about 100 miles from shore.

Today, officials in the Indonesian city of Medan said a load of relief supplies slung under a U.S. military helicopter fell and slammed into a shopping mall. It was not immediately clear whether anyone was injured.

North Sumatra provincial government spokesman Eddy Sofyan said local authorities want U.S. forces to stop transporting loads of aid, which average 500 pounds, in nets below helicopters.

On the other side of the world, making the first of what will be dozens of sad homecomings, the bodies of six Swedes killed by the waves arrived early this morning in Stockholm. Family members touched the coffins and clutched flowers as King Carl XVI Gustaf and other royal family members looked on. The six were among 52 Swedes confirmed, but the number of missing is more than 1,900.

Survivors faced a newly emerging aid bottleneck as a growing fleet of helicopters picked up the injured and sick from ravaged villages and ferried them to overcrowded and undersupplied hospitals in the cities.

About a dozen people lay on stretchers on the sidewalk outside Fakina Hospital in Banda Aceh, provincial capital of Indonesia’s hard-hit island of Sumatra. Many of the hospital’s rooms had no power, walls were speckled with blood, and doctors had run out of stands for intravenous fluid bags, hanging them instead from cords strung across the ceiling.

This Aerial Photograph released Tuesday by the U.S. Navy shows the scoured coastline of Aceh Province on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Residents of the area, who have lost nearly everything, are besieging hospitals in search of food, water and shelter.

“It’s heartbreaking,” said Leslie Ansag of Everett, Wash., a Navy medic from the USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier off Sumatra to help the rescue and recovery effort.

The focus on aid needs intensified as world leaders headed to southern Asia to get a close look at the damage and work out a relief plan at a donor conference Thursday in Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta.

Powell, who visited Thailand and Indonesia on Tuesday, pledged America’s full support. The United States “will certainly not turn away from those in desperate need,” he said.

He said the outpouring of American aid and humanitarian help — the government has pledged $350 million, and citizens are donating tens of millions more — could help Muslims see the United States in a better light.

“What it does in the Muslim world, the rest of the world, is giving an opportunity to see American generosity, American values in action,” said Powell, who is accompanied by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a brother of President Bush.