Fields of death found north of Phuket

Volunteers dragged scores of corpses from beaches, inland pools and once top-class hotels today with the prime minister of Thailand saying the death toll from earthquake-powered tidal waves could pass 2,000.

Deputy Interior Minister Sutham Saengprathum said it was certain more than 700 foreigners were among the dead, but the exact number was still not known.

The stench of death hung in the air for an 18-mile stretch of beach north of the international resort island of Phuket to which Western and Asian tourists seeking tranquility used to flock.

Some 200 bodies, by volunteer Somsak Palawat’s count, lay within the Buddhist Rasneramith temple, up to 70% of them foreigners. Bloated black and green corpses, many of them children and babies, were also scattered around the temple.

Near the devastated Similan Beach and Spa Resort, where some 60 mostly German tourists had been staying, the corpse of a naked man hung suspended from a tree as if crucified. A police patrol boat lay beached more than half a mile from the sea.

“Khao Lak will take several years to restore,” Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said in Bangkok.

This area of Phang Nga Province suffered the most casualties when tidal waves crashed into Thailand’s southern beach and island resorts on Sunday, killing 1,010 people and injuring 7,572, according to the latest tally of the Interior Ministry’s Department of Disaster Prevention and Relief.

Of the dead, 537 were found in Phang Nga province and 203 on Phuket Island.

Thaksin said he expected the death toll to climb to more than 2,000 given the large number of still missing people, many of them foreign visitors from more than 20 countries who packed the wildly popular resorts during the height of the tourist season.

Thaksin and his ministers wore black and white – the colours of mourning – at today’s cabinet meeting and the government ordered all civil servants to fly flags at half-mast and likewise wear mourning clothes for the next three days.

The cabinet urged all Thais and foreigners to conduct religious rites as a gesture of condolence for the earthquake victims on Thursday.

Thaksin said the government would provide tourists who had lost their money in the disaster with plane tickets to return home.

The tidal waves were induced by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake, the strongest in 40 years.

Phang Nga Governor Anuwut Medhiwiboonwut said about 1,000 searchers, including army troops with bulldozers, would move into four areas of the province that have been difficult to access because of flooding and thick mud crusts.

The governor said he expected about 400 bodies to be recovered today.

The devastated stretch between Takua Pa and Khao Lak, 62 miles north of Phuket, was the site of high-end hotels such as Le Meridien, Novotel, Khao Lak Laguna and the Sofitel Magic Lagoon Resort and Spa.

“There are people in the hills we are trying to locate and people in the hospital we are trying to comfort,” said a Sofitel executive Ofwald Tichler, who declined to say how many of the hotel’s guests had died as waves smashed into the 319-room, luxury resort.

The first floors of the three-story, Thai-style hotel were destroyed and thick mud caked the once beautifully landscaped area between the lobby and beach, a distance of some 300 yards.

Several rotting bodies could be seen on the beach, under debris and in a pool of water in front of the hotel as Thai soldiers moved in to search for survivors and the dead. The hotel, owned by the French Accor Hotels and Resorts, was often filled by French holidaymakers.

The search operation was temporarily suspended over fears that a nearby weapons arsenal might explode, but Navy Rear Admiral Apiwat Sriwanna later said there was no danger of an explosion.

Jean-Jacques Collonna, of Pila Canale, Corsica, said he was video filming the oncoming wave when water engulfed his room. Still mud-splattered, he described how the water drove him under a table where he managed to breathe for a spell before being carried away.

Citizens from Ireland, South Korea, Japan, France, Germany, South Africa, Denmark, Finland, Australia, Mexico, Russia, Sweden, Portugal, Israel, Chile, Spain and the United States were among the thousands of foreigners in stricken areas of six provinces on Sunday.

The Swedish tour operator Fritidsresor said 600 Swedes who were vacationing in Khao Lak were not accounted for.

About 1.2 million foreigners are likely to cancel their trips to Thailand, resulting in lost revenue of some 30 billion baht (€564.5m), The Nation newspaper said, quoting the Association of Thai Travel Agents.

Phuket, which alone receives about 1.5 million tourists during the peak holiday season between November and February, is expected to suffer among the greatest losses.

But on Phuket’s Kata beach, some foreign tourists yesterday afternoon had already collected broken beach umbrellas and were back relaxing on the sand - despite some locals spreading rumours that more waves were about to hit the island.

In the evening, some small restaurants that survived were packed out with foreigners.

“Even though we can quickly rebuild hotels, it will take some time to draw back tourists to the affected areas,” the prime minister said. He noted that the ecology had been severely damaged especially in Khao Lak and popular resort island of Phi Phi, parts of which were totally levelled.

In one of the first known incidents of looting, Thaksin said that some ATM machines on Phi Phi had been broken into.