Tsunami death toll likely to exceed 100,000

Aid workers in one of history’s largest relief efforts today struggled to get food, water and medicine to survivors of the massive quake and tsunamis that the Red Cross says likely killed more than 100,000 people across Asia and Africa.

The official toll stood at about 77,000. But with tens of thousands still missing, that number was almost certain to be much higher. There were fears disease could bring a new wave of deaths.

Military ships and planes rushed today to get desperately-needed aid to the ravaged coast of Sumatra, the Indonesian island closest to Sunday’s 9.0-magnitude quake. Countless corpses strewn on the streets rotted under the tropical sun causing a nearly unbearable stench.

“We’re facing a disaster of unprecedented proportion,” said Simon Missiri, a top Red Cross official. “We’re talking about a staggering death toll.”

The United States, India, Australia and Japan have formed an international coalition to co-ordinate worldwide relief and reconstruction efforts, US President George Bush announced. “We will prevail over this destruction,” Bush said.

On the streets of Banda Aceh, the main town of Sumatra’s Aceh province, fights have broken out over packets of instant noodles that the military dropped from vehicles. Meanwhile, relief supplies piled up at a regional airport for lack of cars, gas or passable roads to move them.

“I believe the frustration will be growing in the days and weeks ahead,” said Under-secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland.

The number of deaths in Indonesia stood at more than 45,000. Authorities there said that did not include a full count from Sumatra’s west coast, which had not yet been fully surveyed and where more than 10,000 deaths were suspected.

Sri Lanka reported 22,800 dead, India more than 7,300 and Thailand 1,800 - though that country’s prime minister said he feared the toll would go up 5,000 more. A total of more than 300 were killed in Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Somalia, Tanzania and Kenya.

The disaster struck a band of the tropics from Indonesia to India to Somalia that not only is heavily populated but attracts tourists from all corners. Throughout the world, people sought word of missing relatives, from small-town Sri Lankan fishermen to Europeans on sand-and-sun holidays.

On hundreds of websites, the messages were brief but poignant: “Missing: Christina Blomee in Khao Lak,” or simply, “Where are you?”

But even as hope for the missing dwindled, survivors continued to turn up.

A two-year-old Swedish boy was reunited with his father days after the toddler was found alone on a roadside in Thailand’s southern beach resort island of Phuket. In Sri Lanka, a lone fisherman named Sini Mohammed Sarfudeen was rescued yesterday by an airforce helicopter crew after clinging to his wave-tossed boat for three days.

The US president, speaking yesterday from his ranch in Texas, said the catastrophe “brought loss and grief to the world that is beyond our comprehension”, and vowed a multifaceted US response going far beyond the $35m (€25.7m) initially pledged.

The body count continued to mount dramatically as survey teams reached the most remote areas hit by the disaster. Peter Ress, operations support chief for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said the toll could top 100,000.

In Sumatra, the view from the air was of whole villages ripped apart, covered in mud and seawater. In one of the few signs of life, a handful of desperate people scavenged a beach for food.

“It will take maybe 48 to 72 hours more to able to respond to the tens of thousands of people who would like to have assistance today, or yesterday,” Egeland said.

As the world scrambled to the rescue, relief organisations warned that diseases could add to the death toll.

Without clean water, respiratory and waterborne diseases could break out within days, putting millions at “grave risk,” the UN children’s agency said.

“Standing water can be just as deadly as moving water,” said Unicef Executive Director Carol Bellamy. “The floods have contaminated the water systems, leaving people with little choice but to use unclean surface water.”

Near Banda Aceh on Sumatra, bulldozers have dug mass graves for the bodies - in part over fears that the rotting corpses would spread disease. Trucks dumped more than 1,000 bloated, unidentified bodies into the pits yesterday.

At least two international organisations have tried to spread the word that corpses do not contaminate water or soil because bacteria and viruses cannot survive in dead bodies, and say that it is more important to identify bodies for the sake of relatives than to get them under ground.

“I think that psychologically, people have to be given the chance to identify their family members,” said Dana Van Alphan of the Pan American Health Organisation.

Donations for recovery efforts came in from all parts of the globe and the world’s richest nations pledged more than $250m (€183.5m) in emergency aid.

But billions of dollars will be needed to repair the damage created by the earthquake and tsunami, Egeland said.

The United Nations has launched an appeal for $130m (€95.4m) for three of the hardest-hit countries, but said it would ask for more money early next month.