Millions hunt for food as tsunami toll tops 125,000

Millions of people around the Indian Ocean scrambled for food and clean water yesterday, with disease and hunger now the main threat stalking survivors of the most devastating tsunami on record.

The official death toll rose to 125,282 but the true scale of the disaster may not be known for days, or even weeks, as rescuers battled to reach remote stricken areas and grieving survivors searched for the missing.

The scale that was known was staggering. "Entire villages have been washed away," said Rod Volway, programme manager for CARE Canada's Emergency Response Team which was one of the first aid groups into Indonesia's northern Aceh province, the worst-hit area.

"This isn't just a situation of giving out food and water. Entire towns and villages need to be rebuilt from the ground up. Everything has been destroyed."

UN officials say up to a third of the victims could be children.

As the world pledged $220 million in cash and sent an international flotilla of ships and aircraft with hundreds of tonnes of supplies, history's biggest relief operation battled with the enormity of the task.

"Perhaps as many as five million people are not able to access what they need for living," David Nabarro, who heads the World Health Organisation's health crisis team, told Reuters.

"Either they cannot get water, or their sanitation is inadequate or they cannot get food."

Many villages and resorts are now little more than mud-covered rubble, blanketed with the stench of rotting corpses after a 9.0 magnitude underwater quake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra triggered the tsunami. Thousands of bodies rotting in the tropical heat were tumbled into mass graves.

Health authorities predict a second wave of deaths could hit those who survived Sunday's monster wave from diseases such as dysentery, cholera and typhoid fever caused by contaminated food and water.

Survivors in worst-hit Aceh province complained aid was only trickling in despite a mountain of supplies stacking up at the local airport. Aid officials blamed poor coordination with the military.

In Sri Lanka's worst-hit area of Ampara, local residents were organising the relief effort themselves, going around neighbourhoods with loudhailers, asking people to donate pots and pans, buckets of fresh water and sarongs.

"The government has done nothing for us so far,' said local shopkeeper Mohammed Tamir, who lost a wife and daughter. "Everything you see happening here is being done by the local community."

Indonesian aircraft dropped food to isolated areas along the western coast of Sumatra, an island the size of Florida, where the tsunami obliterated entire towns.

"I believe the frustration will be growing in the days and the weeks ahead," said UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland in New York.

Well over a million people have been left homeless. Hospitals are overwhelmed with the injured - an estimated 100,000 or more across the region.

The United Nations said it was preparing to issue what could be its largest appeal for donations in its history to cope with its biggest and costliest relief effort.

US President George W. Bush said a US pledge of $35 million in aid was just a start.

The US military's 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force, based in Japan, will set up a command post in Thailand to coordinate US efforts. The Pentagon is sending the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, a helicopter carrier and a submarine, to Sumatra.

Insurers estimated damages at $13.6 billion, but that does not include the costs of lost business and productivity.

The strongest earthquake in 40 years and the unprecedented tsunami it triggered kept nerves jangling in the region.

The Indian government issued fresh alerts for all areas hit by the weekend's killer tsunami, prompting panic-stricken people to flee coastal areas.

Police said aftershocks in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, near the epicentre of the quake that caused Sunday's tsunami, would "likely" cause high waves and evacuated hundreds of residents from some coastal areas.

But there were no immediate signs of giant waves and the US Geological Survey said it was unaware of any aftershock large enough to trigger a fresh tsunami.

In the Indonesian city of Banda Aceh, also near the epicentre, two aftershocks on Wednesday night sent many people fleeing their homes.

The killer waves, rolling at speeds of up to 500 km an hour in the open ocean, dragged family members from each other's clutches, swept trucks and buses through buildings and flipped boats onto land when they hit on Sunday. Holiday-makers were caught by surprise.

The quake was so powerful, US scientists said it made the earth jolt on its axis and shifted islands.

Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand faced death tolls of catastrophic proportions. Hundreds were killed in the Maldives, Myanmar, Malaysia and East Africa.

Nearly 5,000 foreigners have been reported missing in tsunami-ravaged resorts, mostly in Thailand.

Forensic teams from Germany, The Netherlands and Switzerland flew into Thailand to help identify bodies.

The tsunami is the world's biggest disaster since a cyclone killed 130,000 people in Bangladesh in 1991.