Battle for survival begins
David Nabarro, who heads the World Health Organisation’s health crisis team, said up to five million people lacked the basic essentials to survive.
Reeking corpses rotted in the tropical sun from India to Indonesia and many who escaped death fought for survival against thirst and disease.
Rescuers scoured remote coastlines around the Indian Ocean for survivors of Sunday’s devastating seawater surge.
“I would not be at all surprised that we will be on 100,000 (deaths) when we know what has happened on the Andaman and Nicobar islands,” said Peter Rees of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
The federation currently puts the death toll at 77,828.
The colossal surge was triggered by an undersea earthquake of magnitude 9.0, the biggest in 40 years, off the Indonesian island of Sumatra. It spread an arc of death from Indonesia to Sri Lanka and beyond to Africa.
US scientists said the quake that set off the wall of water had moved tectonic plates beneath the Indian Ocean by up to 100 feet, causing the Earth to wobble on its axis and permanently shortening the day by a fraction of a second.
Indonesia has suffered the biggest death toll, with 36,268 known to be dead, although the toll could rise to 80,000 in Aceh alone, the province closest to the quake’s epicentre.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono spoke of “frightening reports” from Aceh province, on the northern tip of Sumatra.
“Perhaps as many as five million people are not able to access what they need for living,” said Mr Nabarro. “Either they cannot get water, or their sanitation is inadequate, or they cannot get food.”
The relief operation struggled to get going as health experts said disease could kill as many people as the waves.
Buddhist monks handed out rice and curry to survivors in Sri Lanka and aircraft dropped food to isolated Indonesian towns.
The World Food Programme was trucking food to parts of Sri Lanka while the Red Cross sent sanitation teams to villages in Sri Lanka and Indonesia.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell said the international community might have to give billions of dollars in aid. Washington more than doubled its pledge to $35m and ordered 12 vessels to the region.
In Sri Lanka, where the death toll topped 22,400, Tamil Tiger rebels appealed for help as they dug mass graves to bury thousands of bodies. All 135 children at an orphanage run by women rebels were killed.
Rescue teams headed out to the last of India’s remote Andaman and Nicobar islands, cut off since Sunday. People on some of the isles have been surviving on coconuts. In parts of India’s Tamil Nadu state officials gave up trying to count the dead and counted survivors instead, while burying bodies in mass graves.
The official toll in Thailand is 1,600, but 3,500 foreigners were unaccounted for, including more than 2,000 Scandinavians.
More than 1,800 bodies have been recovered from Khao Lak beach, north of Phuket island, and more than 3,000 people may have died there alone. More than 300 dead had been found on Phi Phi island.
Hundreds of people were killed in the Maldives, Burma and Malaysia. The wave struck as far away as Somalia and Kenya.
