Death toll in Asian quake disaster passes 55,000 mark

Death toll in Asian quake disaster passes 55,000 mark

Agencies,
Jakarta/Galle, Sri Lanka

The confirmed death toll from the massive earthquake and tidal
waves that devastated much of Asia's coastline passed 55,000 on
Tuesday, with officials warning the figure was likely to rise
steeply.

In Indonesia, the government's disaster relief center said at
least 27,174 were killed after the country took the full force of
the huge earthquake and tidal waves that swallowed entire coastal
villages.

In Sri Lanka more than 17,600 people, including at least 70
foreigners, were killed in Sunday's disaster.

More than 8,500 people were reported killed in India with many
more victims expected, officials said.

Among them were about 4,000 in the Andaman and Nicobar
Islands, close to the epicenter of the quake, where thousands
were missing after five villages were swept away, an official
said.

More than 1,500 people were killed, among them more than 700
foreign tourists, in southern Thailand, officials said.

In Myanmar at least 90 people were killed, according to the
UN, while in Malaysia 65 people, including many elderly and
children, were dead, officials said.

At least 55 people including two British holidaymakers were
killed in the tourist paradise of Maldives while another 69 were
missing, officials said.

In Bangladesh a father and child were killed after a tourist
boat capsized from large waves, local officials said.

Fatalities also occurred on the east coast of Africa where 100
fishermen were declared dead in Somalia and 10 in Tanzania.

The scale of the destruction caused by Sunday's monster
tsunami left governments helpless and groping for succour. On
coastline after coastline, the sea disgorged the dead and
rescuers fought through a morass of wreckage, mud and body parts.

The United Nations said the disaster was unique in
encompassing such a large area and so many countries.

Aid agencies struggled to cope with the enormity of the
disaster. The International Red Cross said it may have to treble
its appeal for funds.

"The enormity of the disaster is unbelievable," said Bekele
Geleta, head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red
Crescent Societies (IFRC) in Southeast Asia.

The United Nations said hundreds of relief planes packed with
emergency goods would arrive in the region from about two dozen
countries within the next 48 hours.

Authorities waited in trepidation for the outbreak of diseases
caused by polluted drinking water and the sheer scale of
thousands of putrefying bodies.

As rotting bodies stack up and contaminate water supplies
across Asia, fears grew on Tuesday that sickness will pile more
misery on a region reeling two days on from its worst disaster in
living memory.

With infrastructure, including latrines and water wells, in
the worst hit areas in tatters, international organizations urged
that the thousands of bloated corpses littering beaches, streets
and makeshift morgues be disposed of quickly to stem the threat
of disease.

"The people should be buried and the animals should be
destroyed and disposed of before they infect the drinking water.
It's a massive operation," said UN disaster relief coordinator
Jan Egeland.

Experts said that though the risk of epidemics varied from
country to country according to their standards of hygiene, hot
temperatures, poor to nonexistent sewerage and spoiled food
provided breeding grounds for germs.

In particular, the decomposing bodies contaminating water
would provide ideal conditions for water-borne diseases such as
cholera, typhoid and malaria.

"The biggest health challenges we are facing are the spread of
waterborne diseases, particularly malaria and diarrhea, as well
as respiratory tract infections," said International Federation
of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies health official Hakan
Sandbladh.

Many of the dead were children, and television screens and
newspapers were full of images of grief-stricken parents.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake west of the
Indonesian island of Sumatra measured 9.0 on the Richter scale --
making it the largest quake worldwide in four decades.

Death toll

Indonesia: 27,174
Sri Lanka: 17,640
India: 8,523
Thailand: 1,516
Myanmar: 90
Malaysia: 65
Maldives: 55
Bangladesh: 2

Somalia 100
Tanzania 10

Total: 55,175