New misery for survivors

Millions of people around the Indian Ocean scrambled for food and clean water yesterday as the death toll from the devastating tsunamis topped 87,400.

Worried officials in the area believe disease could double that figure.

More than a million people have been left homeless by the disaster, and hospitals have been overwhelmed by at least 100,000 injured.

European leaders were also preparing their citizens for a grim New Year.

Hopes were fading yesterday for thousands of missing tourists, mainly Scandinavians and Germans.

Fresh earthquakes prompted tidal wave warnings, and panic in several countries.

And accusations mounted that incompetent officials - particularly in India where 13,230 are believed to have died - wasted what little warning time they had before the first tsunami struck.

The world has pledged US$250 million ($355 million) in cash and sent an international flotilla of ships and aircraft with hundreds of tonnes of supplies.

"As many as five million people are not able to access what they need for living," said David Nabarro, who heads the World Health Organisation's health crisis team.

"They cannot get water, or their sanitation is inadequate or they cannot get food."

The official death toll had last night risen to 87,475.

More than half the dead were from Indonesia.

But there were warnings that the death toll in the war-torn Indonesia province of Aceh, which was near the quake's centre, could rise to 80,000.

One New Zealander, Leone Cosens, has been confirmed killed in Thailand, but two others are feared to be dead.

A Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade report that 53 New Zealanders who were at Thailand's worst affected beaches were missing was later increased to 74. A ministry statement said new information had come in. There are others believed to be unaccounted for in Sri Lanka and the Andaman Islands.

The Red Cross emergency centre in Wellington has received 4000 calls.

Operations manager Andrew McKie said last night there had been a significant increase in people phoning to let authorities know their friends or relatives had been found. But calls about people missing outnumbered calls about those found.

A forensics team and an emergency response team were to arrive in Thailand on an Air Force 757 today, and will try to identify bodies. Rescuers in many places are still struggling to reach the survivors of the huge earthquake, which struck just off Sumatra early on Sunday morning, and tsunami it triggered.

Indonesian regions were devastated, and entire villages and tourist resorts from Asia to Africa have been destroyed or washed away.

Rescue teams, food and millions of dollars in aid have been pledged to the worst hit nations of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand.

Insurers estimate the damage at US$13.6 billion ($19 billion).

Villages and resorts, now little more than mud-covered rubble blanketed with rotting corpses, remained inaccessible to equipment.

Thousands of bodies are being tumbled into mass graves for burial.

Contaminated water, ruptured sewage systems and mosquito-borne diseases threatened survivors, and the United Nations said yesterday that it was preparing for its biggest relief effort.

"This isn't just a situation of giving out food and water. Entire towns and villages need to be rebuilt from the ground up. Everything has been destroyed," Canada's Care programme manager Rod Volway said.

The southernmost tip of Indian territory, Indira Point in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, has been swallowed by the sea, the coastguard and police said.

"The lighthouse is in the middle of the sea," Andamans police chief Sansher Doel said.

A large proportion of Sri Lanka's population is aged under 18, and officials fear that up to a third of the thousands killed there will be children.

The official number of tourists killed listed by their home nations is 212, but almost 5000 are missing and in Thailand alone, authorities have said 435 foreign holidaymakers are dead.

About 500 Swedes, 1000 Germans, 600 Italians, 464 Norwegians, 219 Danes, 200 Finns, 200 Czechs and 294 Singaporeans were reported as missing by their countries.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder told citizens to expect that hundreds of missing Germans had been killed.

"Bearing in mind the terrible destruction of the flood wave, we must fear a significant three-digit number of Germans will be among the dead," he said.

"This will affect Swedish lives for a long time to come," Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson said.

Norway's Foreign Minister, Jan Petersen, said the tsunami threatened to be one of the worst disasters for his nation in modern times.

Thai police said 3000 people may have been killed in the resort of Khao Lak.

Major Chakrit Kaewwattana said more than 1800 bodies had been recovered from Khao Lak beach and its luxury hotels.

Searchers expected to find several hundred more bodies on an island just north of the beach.

The tsunami is the world's biggest natural disaster since a cyclone killed 130,000 people in Bangladesh in 1991.

- REUTERS, AGENCIES