Bodies piled on Asian coasts as death toll surpasses 23,000
Bodies piled on Asian coasts as death toll surpasses 23,000
Chamintha Thilakarathna,
Reuters/Colombo
Rescuers scoured the sea for missing tourists in Asia on Monday
and fears of disease grew as emergency services struggled with
rotting bodies from a devastating tsunami that killed more than
23,000 people.
The disaster spared no one. Western tourists were killed
sunbathing on beaches, poor villagers drowned in homes by the sea
and fishermen died in flimsy boats. The 21-year-old grandson of
Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej was killed on a jet-ski.
"We have a long way to go in collecting bodies," said
Thailand's Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who expected the
866 death toll in his country to go much higher.
Sri Lanka was hardest hit by the tsunami -- a wall of water
triggered by the world's biggest earthquake in 40 years with a
magnitude of 9.0 that erupted off the northern Indonesian coast.
Colombo officials said their latest death toll had nearly doubled
to 11,000 and 200 foreign tourists were feared dead.
Families around the world anxiously sought news of loved ones
on Christmas holidays whose dreams of sunshine in the east were
turned into scenes of disaster. Calls from worried relatives
swamped hotlines set up by ministries and tour firms.
With at least seven Asian nations and one in East Africa
counting the terrible human and economic cost of the tragedy on
Monday, Western nations pledged aid and geologists asked why
early warning systems that could have saved thousands of lives
were not in place.
Struggling with destroyed communications, power outages and
swamped and debris-strewn roads, emergency workers were shocked
by the sheer scale of the catastrophe.
"We are used to dealing with disasters in one country. But I
think something like this spread across many countries and
islands is unprecedented. We have not had this before," Yvette
Stevens, a UN emergency relief official, said in Geneva.
Other areas worst affected by Sunday's tsunami were southern
India, where more than 6,600 were listed dead, northern Indonesia
with nearly 5,000 drowned and Thailand's devastated southern
tourist isles and beaches.
Deaths were also reported in Bangladesh, Malaysia, the
Maldives, Myanmar and distant Somalia where 14 people were killed
by swollen seas.
The earthquake triggered a tsunami of up to 10 meters high,
sometimes traveling as fast as an airliner, flattening houses,
hurling fishing boats onto roads, sending cars spinning through
swirling waters into hotel lobbies and sucking sunbathers, babies
and fishermen out to sea.
Death toll
Sri Lanka: 11,000
India: 6,600
Indonesia: 5,000
Thailand: 866
Malaysia: 51
Maldives: 43
Myanmar: 56
Bangladesh: 2
Somalia 100