csua.org/u/ama -> story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050107/ap_on_re_as/tsunami&cid=514&ncid=514
Top Stories - AP By LELY T DJUHARI, Associated Press Writer BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - The official death toll from the Asian tsunami cl imbed dramatically to 147,000 Friday and authorities held out little hop e for tens of thousands still missing.
Indonesia said searchers found 7,118 more bodies in the shattered coastal town of Meulaboh, where families picked through piles of rubble. Indian officials raised that country's toll by 310, most of them killed in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, where 5,600 were missing and presumed dead . Sweden, Britain and France warned they feared that nearly 1,100 of their citizens missing in the disaster were dead. Nearly two weeks after huge waves struck 11 countries in Asia and Africa, the lists of missing were still rising. Sri Lanka, with more than 30,00 0 known dead, added 528 names to its ranks of missing, for a total of 4, 984. Indonesia, the worst hit country, estimates 101,318 dead and 10,070 missing. Officials said some people trying to find loved ones were only now report ing them as missing. "First the people tried to find them among the dead , then went around the hospitals. Now they are coming to us," said KG Wijesiri at Sri Lanka's National Disaster Management Center.
web sites) official predicted the final toll would be far higher. "I think we have to be aware that very, very many o f the victims have been swept away and many, many will not reappear," U N humanitarian chief Jan Egeland said. Annan returned from a helicopter flight Friday over the western coast of Indonesia's Sumatra island unsettled by the devastation. "I have never seen such utter destruction mile after mile," he somberly t old reporters.
web sites) toured stricke n areas in Sri Lanka and promised long-term American help to rebuild. "O nly by seeing it on the ground can you really appreciate what it must ha ve been like on that terrible day," he said. People flying over Sumatra have reported a veritable skeleton coast, with bodies still floating at sea. Bleached concrete pads are all that is le ft of substantial structures, scattered corrugated iron roofs crumpled l ike paper the only evidence of flimsier houses.
web sites) pilots and crewmen returning to the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln after seven hours of nonstop flying str uggled to find words to describe the devastation. All t he people once had homes, lives," said Petty Officer 1st Class Scott Wic kland of Cumberland, Wis. Touring the battered Thai resort of Phuket, British Foreign Minister Jack Straw was similarly moved by the suffering in Thailand, which has 5,291 confirmed deaths and 3,716 missing many of them vacationing foreigner s "Bodies are still being washed up and unearthed," he said. "The scale of the effort still required is truly daunting." In a bleak announcement, Sweden's government said Friday that 637 missing Swedes were feared dead, along with 52 known dead. It had been reportin g more than 1,900 missing, but drew a distinction Friday between those k nown to be missing and some 1,300 Swedes simply unaccounted for. French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier issued a similar warning for his c ountry, saying "there is little hope" for 69 missing French citizens. Straw said 49 Britons were known dead, but added that his government felt 391 others listed as missing were "very likely" dead. In Washington, State Department spokesman J Adam Ereli said about 2,100 Americans remain unaccounted for. He said 17 others were confirmed dead and 20 presumed dead. Thousands of aid workers are struggling to come up with an accurate count of deaths, but poor birth records, a lack of census data and the sheer expanse of destruction make it difficult. Indian officials said their death toll of 10,001 was determined from a di rect count of bodies recovered. Officials in Indonesia, swamped by the vast numbers, acknowledge they hav e been forced to make crude estimates, such as counting the number of bo dies in one mass grave and multiplying that 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. Annan's trip over Sumatra came a day after he met with world leaders in t he Indonesian capital, Jakarta, to discuss how to turn one of history's largest-ever aid packages nearly $4 billion in pledges so far into f ood and shelter for the desperate. A telethon in Saudi Arabia raised $674 million in 11 hours, drawing donations of cash, tents and blankets , even diamonds. In Norway, four young girls sold their Christmas presen ts, raising nearly $1,000. The world's richest nations have agreed that debt repayments for tsunami- devastated countries should be frozen, Britain's Chancellor of the Exche quer Gordon Brown said Friday. The Group of 7 leading industrial nations will asks the larger Paris Club of creditor nations to go along at a me eting Wednesday. Efforts accelerated to help survivors in Indonesia, where authorities sai d two dozen relief camps should be operating within a week. Tens of thou sands lack clean drinking water and face the threat of disease. In the hills above one wrecked area, three bulldozers prepared a 30-acre campsite on government land dotted with banana trees, chili plants and g razing cattle. A refugee at one makeshift shelter, Marlina Hutabarat, worried that as th e region's 500,000 newly homeless people move into large camps, their co mmunities will be scattered.
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