Tidal waves kill 2,100 in Sri Lanka

Massive waves triggered by earthquakes crashed into villages along a wide stretch of Sri Lankan coast today, killing more than 2,100 people and displacing a million others, the prime minister’s office said.

“It is a huge tragedy and it is unfolding all the time,” said Lalith Weerathunga, secretary to the prime minister.

“The death toll is going up all the time,” he said, adding that the latest body count stood at 2,150. I don’t know when I can say that this is it, but the reports of deaths are still coming,” Weerathunga said.

He added that he did not think the final toll would reach 5,000, but said the government was not aware what had happened in coastal areas controlled by the Tamil Tiger rebels.

The rebels, who are fighting for autonomy for the country’s 3.2 million Tamils, control coastal areas in the north east. There is no estimate of how many people live in coastal areas under rebel control, but it runs into hundreds of thousands.

Death, devastation and pain were seen everywhere in this tropical island country of 19 million people.

“I counted 24 bodies in a stretch of only six kilometres,” said Gemunu Amarasinghe, an Associated Press photographer who went to one of the affected area south of Colombo. “I saw bodies of children entangled in wire mesh” used to barricade seaside homes.

“There were rows and rows of women and men standing on the road and asking if anyone has seen their family members,” said Amarasinghe.

“I also saw people bringing in bodies from the sea beaches and placing them on roads and covering them with sarongs,” he said.

Amarasinghe said he was told some of the victims were sucked into the sea when they rushed to retrieve beached fish after the first waves hit and retreated.

Officials and hospital doctors warned that the death toll was still rising.

Flash floods shut the port in the capital, Colombo, and displaced thousands of people in dozens of villages along the eastern and southern coasts, police said.

The tidal waves also hit the neighbouring island country of Maldives, where authorities closed the airport.

Maldives government spokesman Ahmed Shaheed said waves as high as one metre hit the low-lying capital, Male, two-thirds of which was under water. He said there were unconfirmed reports of casualties on other islands.

“The airport itself had been flooded and remains closed,” he said in a statement. Sri Lanka’s government called the situation a national disaster.

Parts the country’s north eastern districts of Muttur and Trincomalee were inundated by waves as high as six metres, said D Rodrigo, a Muttur district official.

“The police station in Muttur is under water and the area is badly affected,” said police spokesman Rienzie Perera.

“It is a very tragic situation,” he said, adding that some hospitals were unable to treat the wounded.

The Seismological Department said it believed the tidal waves were caused by earthquakes.