60,000 dead, 12 countries devastated - now disease threatens millions

THE sea and wreckage of coastal towns around the Indian Ocean yielded up tens of thousands of bodies yesterday pushing the toll from Sunday's tsunami above 60,000.

Last night, the death toll across 12 countries was rising by the hour.

The apocalyptic destruction caused by the ocean surge dwarfed the efforts of governments and relief agencies as they recovered countless corpses while trying to treat survivors and take care of millions of homeless, increasingly threatened by disease amid the rotting corpses. Thousands more were injured.