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The death toll from Asia's earthquake-triggered
tsunamis was being put at 50,000 early today and the United Nations said the
calamity may be history's costliest natural disaster.
About 10,000 dead were found in a single Indonesian
town in Aceh province as the overall toll on Tuesday doubled from the previous
day. Officials say the death toll will keep rising as thousands of people
remain missing and millions are homeless.
Aid agencies feared malaria and cholera may add to the
toll from Sunday's massive quake-sparked waves and mounted what UN officials
said would be the world's biggest relief effort. ``This is unprecedented,''
said Yvette Stevens, an emergency relief co-ordinator of the UN Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Almost a third of the dead in the region were
children, the UN children's agency estimated.
But help was not arriving fast enough for Indonesia's
Sumatra island, where residents turned to looting to find food. ``There is no
help, it is each person for themselves here,'' district official Tengku
Zulkarnain told a radio station.
Emergency workers who reached the northern tip of
Sumatra island found that 10,000 people had been killed in a single town,
Meulaboh, said Purnomo Sidik, national disaster director at the Social Affairs
Ministry.
In Sri Lanka, the waves had flung a train off its
tracks, leaving many of its 1,000 passengers dead or missing, police said on
Tuesday, as rescuers uncovered thousands of bodies, bringing the island
nation's toll to 18,706.
About 19,000 were killed in Indonesia, more than 4,000
in India and more than 1,500 in Thailand. Indonesia's vice-president estimated
his country had up to 25,000 victims.
And as rescuers began reaching India's remote Andaman
and Nicobar islands, they found barely one third of residents on one isle were
still alive. Officials fear at least 7,000 people have been killed on this and
one other island alone - bringing the estimate for all of India to over 11,000
- with contact still to be made with several more of the island group near
Burma and Indonesia.
With 55 dead, the Maldives delayed national elections
indefinitely.
The tidal waves and flooding have uprooted land mines
in Sri Lanka, threatening to kill or maim aid workers and survivors attempting
to return to what is left of their homes.
Sri Lanka's air force evacuated former German
chancellor Helmut Kohl from the hotel where he was stranded in the hard-hit
south to Colombo. Kohl, 74, was uninjured.
Rescuers on Sumatra island - nearest the epicentre of
Sunday's monstrous quake - battled to reach isolated coasts and dig into the
rubble of destroyed houses to seek survivors and the dead.
``We are working 24 hours to get people out,'' Red
Cross worker Tamin Faisil said from Banda Aceh.
Red Cross official Irman Rachmat, also in Banda Aceh,
said people on the island were in despair.
``People are looting, but not because they are evil,
but they are hungry,'' he said. ``We don't have enough people to bury the
dead.''
In the once-thriving resorts of southern Thailand,
volunteers dragged scores of corpses - including many foreign tourists - from
beaches, inland pools and the debris of once ritzy hotels.
Amid the devastation were some miraculous stories of
survival.
In Malaysia, a 20-day-old baby was found alive on a
floating mattress. She and her family were reunited.
For others, the pain of their loss was unbearable.
``Where are my children?'' asked 41-year-old Absah, as she searched for her 11
youngsters in Banda Aceh. ``Where are they?''
Scores of people were also killed in Malaysia, Burma
and Bangladesh.
The waves went as far as Somalia, where at least 100
died, and Tanzania, with 10. The Seychelles, Bangladesh and Kenya reported a
handful of deaths.
The United States despatched disaster teams and
prepared a US$15 million (HK$117 million) aid package. The European Union
promised three million euros (HK$31.59 million).
ASSOCIATED PRESS, REUTERS
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