Sri Lankan officials said today they expect the country’s tsunami death toll to exceed 40,000 people, as emergency workers pull more bodies from the rubble three weeks after the disaster.

Two weeks after a tsunami slammed into coastlines around the Indian Ocean, thousands of bodies were still being pulled out of the mud and world leaders visiting the region were shocked at the devastation.

The Sri Lankan government today said that rescue workers recovered no corpses in the past 12 hours, but cautioned that the island’s current death toll of 30,196 was not likely to be the final figure.

Sri Lanka’s government is allocating disaster relief to Tamils in rebel-controlled territory without discrimination, the prime minister said today, as he warned that the guerillas’ appeal for direct international aid would further split the war-ravaged country.

The massive tidal waves that slammed into Sri Lanka flung a train off its tracks leaving its 1,000 passengers dead or missing, police said today.