Thousands more bodies discovered as Annan tours ravaged coast

Indonesia pulled 7,118 new bodies from the rubble near a shattered beachfront community visited today by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, bringing the confirmed overall death toll from the Asian tsunami to nearly 150,000.

Officials struggled to nail down the number of victims nearly two weeks after the tsunami struck 11 countries in Asia and Africa.

“The scale and magnitude of this disaster makes it literally unique and … bodies are still being washed up and unearthed,” British Foreign Minister Jack Straw told reporters while touring stricken areas in Thailand. “The scale of the effort still required is truly daunting.”

He said the number of British tourists killed will likely more than double to 440.

Flying over the tsunami-ravaged shoreline, Annan described the devastation as the worst he’s ever witnessed. Helicopter flights over the area show a veritable skeleton coast. Bodies were still floating at sea this week – days after the St Stephen's Day tsunami.

“I have never seen such utter destruction mile after mile,” a shaken Annan said. ”You wonder where are the people? What has happened to them?”

Thousands of aid workers are helping count the dead, but the numbers are staggering, with more than 147,000 now confirmed dead. Poor birth records, a lack of census data, the sheer expanse of destruction contribute to highly imprecise numbers, which seemed likely to continue rising.

India’s death toll crossed 10,000 when more than 300 bodies were recovered in the isolated Andaman and Nicobar Islands, an official said.

Meanwhile, bodies are decomposing and difficult to identify. Officials in Indonesia, swamped by the vast numbers, acknowledge they have been forced to make crude estimates, such as taking the number of bodies in one mass grave and multiplying it by the number of such plots.

In other cases, they’ve estimated the population of a village, counted the survivors and assumed the rest are dead.

The country increased its toll by 7,118 today, after uncovering thousands of bodies in and around the town of Meulaboh. It was cut off from the rest of the stricken island of Sumatra for days because roads were swept away and sea jetties destroyed.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell toured stricken areas in Sri Lanka, where more than 30,000 people died, and promised long-term American help to rebuild.

“Only by seeing it on the ground can you really appreciate what it must have been like on that terrible day,” he said, clearly as overwhelmed as Annan.

One after another, communities well-rooted for generations were obliterated in moments in Sumatra. Most substantial structures were reduced to bleached concrete pads. From the air, nothing was visible of flimsier village houses except for scattered corrugated iron roofs crumpled like paper.

Pilots and crewmen returning to the US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln after seven hours of non-stop flying struggled to find words to describe the scale of the devastation.

“You can’t really explain. There used to be towns and cities there. All the people once had homes, lives,” said Petty Officer Scott Wickland. “Now there is nothing.”

Efforts accelerated to help survivors in Indonesia, where authorities said two dozen relief camps should be operational within a week. Tens of thousands lack clean drinking water and face the threat of disease.