Annan views scenes of ‘utter destruction’

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan flew over the ravaged landscape of Indonesia’s tsunami-hit Aceh province yesterday and asked “Where are the people?” as Jakarta sharply raised its death toll.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell also expressed shock at the scale of the disaster as he made a separate tour of another devastated Indian Ocean country - Sri Lanka - on one of his last foreign trips before he steps down in a fortnight.

As aid workers turned their attention to hundreds of thousands of people thought to be stranded in isolated parts of Indonesia’s Sumatra island, Jakarta added more than 7,000 deaths to its tsunami toll. It now stands at 101,318, out of a total of more than 153,000 for the 13 nations affected.