Quake, tsunamis kill hundreds in southern Asia

The world's fifth-largest quake in a century hit southern Asia last night, triggering a speeding tsunami that crashed into Sri Lanka and India, drowning hundreds, and swamped tourist islands in Thailand and the Maldives.

A wall of water up to 10 meters high set off by the 8.9 magnitude earthquake swept into Indonesia, over the coast of Sri Lanka and India and along the southern Thai tourist island of Phuket, leaving at least 1,500 feared dead, officials said.

Two-thirds of the Maldives capital, Male, was flooded and officials voiced fears for the fate of dozens of low-lying, palm-ringed coral atolls crowded with international tourists for the Christmas holiday season.

Sri Lanka, where officials feared the death toll would rise to 1,000, appealed for emergency international assistance, President Chandrika Kumaratunga's office said in a statement.

"The president has declared a state of national disaster due to the seriousness of the situation," it said.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh alerted the navy after 390 were reported dead and offered help to Sri Lanka.

The earthquake of magnitude 8.9 as measured by the US Geological Survey first struck at 7:59 am local time off the coast of the northern Indonesian island of Sumatra and swung north with multiple tremors into the Andaman islands.

More than 100 tourists on diving holidays were missing on islands off southern Thailand, about 70 of them in the famed Emeral Cave, a tourist official said.

The government sent helicopters to Koh Phi Phi, another island popular with tourists, and other smaller islands in the Andaman Sea to assess the damage.

It also ordered the immediate evacuation of stricken areas, which included beaches on the resort island of Phuket popular with Western and Asian tourists and in peak season.

"Nothing like this has ever happened in our country before," said Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

FIFTH-BIGGEST IN A CENTURY

The earthquake was the world's biggest since 1964, said Julie Martinez, geophysicist for the US Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado. "It is multiple earthquakes along the same faultline.

"We've just updated it to 8.9 magnitude. That makes it the fifth-largest earthquake since 1900," she said.

As many as 1,000 were feared dead in Sri Lanka.

"The army and the navy have sent rescue teams; we have deployed over four choppers and half the navy's eastern fleet to look for survivors," said military spokesman Brigadier Daya Ratnayake.

The worst-hit area appeared to be the tourist region of the south and east where beach hotels were inundated or swept away.

An official in eastern Trincomalee said 3,000 people had been displaced and six villages destroyed.

In the low-lying Maldives, President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom was to declare a national disaster in the archipelago whose coral atolls are a magnet for tourists from around the world, said chief government spokesman Ahmed Shaheed.

"The damage is considerable," Shaheed said. "The island is only about three feet (one meter) above sea level and a wave of water four feet high swept over us."

The international airport was unusable, he said.

"It is a very bad situation. It is terrible," Shaheed said.

"As you know it is the peak tourist season. We are trying to get reports from those areas. The whole of the Maldives is a tourist area so we are just hoping and praying."

The world's worst tsunami in recent history struck on July 17, 1998, when three waves ripped through Papua New Guinea's northwest coast, killing 2,500.

CHILDREN TORN FROM PARENTS ARMS

At least 150 people were killed on Indonesia's Sumatra island where the wave washed people out to sea and tore children from their parents' arms, officials said.

"Maybe they were being carried by their parents but they fell over in the water and could not hold onto their children. All the dead children drowned," said Sadli, a hospital official in Lhokseumawe. Of the dead, 21 were children under 10.

Indonesia, an archipelago of 17,000 islands, lies along the Pacific Ring of Fire where plate boundaries intersect and volcanoes regularly erupt.

To the north in Thailand, officials reported one wave 5 to 10m high hit hotel-lined beaches on Phuket.

At least 55 people had been killed and more than 700 left hurt or missing, officials said.

"It happened in cycles. There would be a surge and then it would retreat and then there would be a next surge which was more violent and it went on like that," Paul Ramsbottom, a Briton on holiday in a Phuket beach bungalow, told BBC World tv.

"Then there was this one almighty surge. I mean literally this was the one which was picking up pickup trucks and motorcycles and throwing them around in front of us," he added.

One foreigner was known to be among the dead in Krabi.

Thai television showed scenes of devastation on one Phuket beach. Store fronts were damaged and cars and motorcycles were strewn around after being tossed about by the powerful waves.

A Thai man carried one elderly Western man in swimming trunks to safety on his back, ITV showed.

At least 390 people have been killed along the southern Indian coast and rescuers were searching for hundreds of fishermen missing after the wave, government officials said.

About 100 people had died in Madras alone, the city's police commissioner, K. Natarajan, told reporters. "The bodies in the hospital are mostly young women and children."

- REUTERS

* Those concerned about relatives in countries affected by the disasters can call the after-hours number for consular enquiries at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: (04) 439-8000.

* The Herald would like to speak to any New Zealanders affected by the earthquake or the tsunamis. You can contact us by email: newsdesk@nzherald.co.nz