TRAVELLERS are forever seeking the perfect little place far from the madding crowd. For some it’s a deck chair under a huge umbrella on a palm-edged beach in the Caribbean. Others seek adventure, ancient monuments or a glimpse of endangered wildlife. I myself am in search of tranquil surroundings, cool crisp linen, freshly squeezed juices and of course good food.

At least people 15 have been killed and more than 120,000 displaced in flash floods and landslides caused by incessant rains in Sri Lanka during the week, officials said today.

Suspected Tamil rebels posing as fishermen blew up two of their boats in a suicide ambush on a naval base, killing at least one navy sailor in the first such attack on Sri Lanka's touristy southern coast, the military said.

A Sri Lankan surgeon today performed the country’s first known post-tsunami sterilisation reversal procedure on a mother whose three children were killed by the December 26 waves.

The Sri Lankan government has suspended three village officials for mishandling aid to tsunami survivors and 10 others were being investigated on similar charges, an official said today.

ASIA’S tsunami death toll soared past 175,000 yesterday as Sri Lanka confirmed thousands more dead, while fears re-emerged over the safety of aid workers in Indonesia’s Aceh province.

Sri Lankan authorities are investigating an alleged attempt to sell two children orphaned by last month’s tsunami, police said today.

Stunned by the devastation wrought by the Asian tsunami, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan toured a Sri Lankan town today where hundreds of shoppers at an outdoor weekly market were swept to their deaths.

Lt. Col. Edmund Bowen of the US Marines is a seasoned solider who has served in the Persian Gulf and Somalia.

A young Sri Lankan woman has spoken of how she survived the tsunami, only to suffer the inhumanity of her rescuer as he raped her.

THE Sri Lankan military struggled yesterday to clear the devastated railway line where a train was ripped from the tracks by the power of the tsunami.

The Sri Lankan military struggled today to clear the devastated railway line where a train was ripped from the tracks by the power of the tsunami.

As world leaders gathered today to co-ordinate more than €2.8bn in tsunami relief, doctors warned of a looming catastrophe from ever-more serious health crises – gangrenous wounds that require limb amputations, scores of children with diarrhoea, pneumonia caused by exposure to dirty water.

Exhausted after barely surviving the Asian tsunami, 17-year-old Nelum was lying on the cement floor of a relief centre when she felt a hand on her knee.

American and Indian troops engaged in relief efforts for Sri Lanka might use the operation as a cover to spy on Tamil Tiger rebels, a rebel leader charged today.

ONE Irish family, who have just returned from Sri Lanka, spent the past three days knocking on neighbours' doors and furiously sending out emails as they try to rush through money to a makeshift camp in the south of the country.

A teenager left orphaned and homeless after tsunamis swept the Sri Lankan coast was gang raped in the hours that followed, a top official said today.

The known death toll from Asia’s earthquake and tsunami catastrophe passed 124,000 today as a deluge from the skies added to the misery in many of the affected nations.

Grieving families of Sri Lankan children who perished in the tsunamis are abducting orphans from the disaster area without approval, a move denounced today by the government and an aid organisation.

Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who was evacuated from his seaside Sri Lankan holiday hotel when the tsunami hit, said the resulting devastation reminded him of Second World War bombing.

AT LEAST 1,000 people on board a Sri Lankan train perished when waves swept the carriages off the track in one of the biggest losses of life from the natural disaster that struck from Indonesia to Africa.

MASS funerals of thousands of tsunami victims got underway in Sri Lanka yesterday as volunteers pulled more decomposed corpses from washed out trains, cars and smashed buildings.

The death toll from the killer waves unleashed across the Indian Ocean by the megaquake climbed inexorably toward 50,000 tonight.

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.

Hundreds died when a train carrying 1,000 passengers from the Sri Lankan capital Colombo to Galle, on the southern tip of the island, was thrown off its tracks by Sunday’s waves.

The Indonesian megaquake may be history’s costliest natural disaster, the United Nations said.

Families of the dead used cooking utensils and even their bare hands to dig graves in the aftermath of a huge tidal wave in Sri Lanka, as rescuers searching through the debris uncovered another 2,480 bodies today, bringing the toll on the tropical island to 15,000.

WAILING relatives scrambled over hundreds of bodies piled in a Sri Lankan hospital yesterday, searching for loved ones as the tsunami death toll soared above 12,000 on the island.

AT first, American tourist Matthew O’Connell thought the rising sea was the sign of a good day’s surfing ahead.

The death toll from massive tidal waves that struck Sri Lanka’s coastline leapt to more than 11,500 today as thousands of soldiers and families searched for bodies a day after the disaster.

SRI LANKA yesterday fought to feed and shelter more than 200,000 survivors of the worst floods and landslides to hit the island in half a century as the death toll rose to more than 300, officials said.