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