Many do not know if missing relatives are dead or alive
|
Survivors and rescuers are battling the devastation left by sea surges that wiped out entire communities, killing about 23,000 people.
The death toll continues to spiral up and mass graves are being dug even as people hunt for the missing.
The extent of the damage is still not known in areas worst hit, including Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India and Thailand.
International aid efforts have begun amid fears that disease could spread through the disaster zone.
Survivors may have little clean water or sanitation as they try to build shelters and bury the dead after Sunday's 9.0 magnitude earthquake sent huge waves from Malaysia to Africa.
 |
DISASTER TOLL
Sri Lanka: 11,000 dead
Indonesia: 4,500 dead
India: 3,500 dead
Thailand: 839 dead
Malaysia: 44 dead
Maldives: 32 dead
Burma: 30 dead
Bangladesh: 2 dead
|
"This may be the worst natural disaster in recent history because it is affecting so many heavily populated coastal areas... so many vulnerable communities," UN emergency relief co-ordinator Jan Egeland told CNN.
Sri Lankan government officials doubled the number of known deaths on Monday to more than 10,000 and at least 800 more are reported killed in the rebel-held north of the island.
"The scale of the tragedy is massive and Sri Lanka... has never been hit by tidal waves or earthquakes in its known history," President Chandrika Kumaratunga told the BBC.
Aftershocks
The number of dead has also soared well into the thousands in Indonesia and India, and thousands more may have been killed on the Andaman and Nicobar islands where reports say entire communities were swept into the sea.
|
The waves flattened entire areas
|
Packed holiday resorts in Thailand were also badly hit, and the waves killed people in Malaysia, the Maldives, Burma and Bangladesh.
Thousands are missing and many more thousands forced from their homes by the worst earthquake in 40 years that generated a wall of water speeding across the oceans.
Hundreds of fishermen are feared drowned off the coast of Somalia, officials said on Monday.
Aftershocks have also been detected, sparking warnings from Indian and Sri Lankan weather officials of further, smaller surges, also known as tsunamis.
Searches are continuing off southern India for those swept away from beaches or in fishing boats.
|
EARTHQUAKE EXPLAINED
Click below to see how the disaster unfolded
|
"Death came from the sea," Satya Kumari, a construction worker living in Pondicherry, told Reuters. "The waves just kept chasing us. It swept away all our huts. What did we do to deserve this?"
In northern Indonesia, nearest the epicentre of the undersea quake, soldiers were sent to recover bodies from trees where they were dumped by huge waves, as correspondents reported the stench of death was beginning to become overpowering.
One man, Rajali, told the Associated Press news agency he could not find dry ground to bury his wife and two children.
|
GIANT EARTHQUAKES
1960 - Chile, 9.5 magnitude
1964 - Alaska, 9.2
1957 - Alaska, 9.1
1952 - Russia, 9.0
2004 - Indonesia, 9.0
|
Helicopters winched survivors from Phi Phi island in Thailand overnight as the navy was called in to help the rescue effort from the country's ruined holiday resorts that had been packed with tourists from dozens of countries.
Many of the bodies still being recovered are said to be clad in swimsuits, with people dragged to their deaths as the tsunami smashed into beaches without warning.
A national disaster has been announced in the low-lying Maldives islands, more than 2,500km (1,500 miles) from the quake's epicentre, after they were hit by severe flooding.
Aid promises
International organisations have already made pledges to help the victims.
- The International Monetary Fund promised "whatever possible assistance"
- The Red Cross launched an appeal for 5m euros (�3.5m; $6.8m)
- The European Union pledged 3m euros (�2.1m; $4.1m)
- Australia promised A$10m (�4m; $7.7m) and sent two air force planes carrying drinking water and purification equipment to Indonesia
- Russia sent 25 tons of humanitarian aid to Sri Lanka
- The UK is sending an aid flight to Sri Lanka with plastic sheeting and tenting
- French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier will travel on a plane carrying humanitarian aid and doctors to Sri Lanka and Thailand.
Sunday's tremor - the fifth strongest since 1900 - had a particularly widespread effect because it seems to have taken place just below the surface of the ocean, analysts say.
Experts say tsunamis generated by earthquakes can travel at up to 500km/h.
IMPACT OF THE EARTHQUAKE
E-mail this to a friend
Printable version
Enlarge Image
How the quake unfolded
