Tsunami toll ticks to 135,000

NEW DELHI, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- The death toll from the killer tsunamis shot up Friday to 135,000 killed and rendering as many as 5 million homeless as entire new villages are found devastated five days after the catastrophe struck.

Meanwhile, in Sri Lanka, separatist Tamil Tiger rebels say that at least 14,000 people were killed in the rebel-held coastal districts in the north and east of the island.

The toll in the small island nation has now jumped to 41,000, pushing the overall toll to 135,000 in the worst quake in 40 years.

Thousands more are missing and presumed dead, including hundreds of Western tourists who were enjoying Christmas holidays in the luxury beach resorts in Thailand and Sri Lanka.

In India, the search continues for nearly 10,000 people reported missing in remote Car Nicobar islands. Officials fear all missing are presumed dead.

The giant waves, known as tsunami, or harbor waves in Japanese, were caused by an undersea 9.0 strength earthquake that rocked the tip of Indonesia's Sumatra island. The 10-meter high waves then traveled at furious speed of up to 500-miles an hour and wobbled several smaller islands and altered the coastal map of several countries.

Damage was reported in as far as Somalia and Kenya in East Africa.

While Indonesia reported 80,000 deaths, Sri Lanka lost 41,000 lives and at least 11,000 were killed in India. Nearly 4,000 people were killed in Thailand, including hundreds of foreign tourists in Phuket beach resort city. Several hundred people, including scores of Swedish and German tourists, are reported missing.

New Year festivities have been cancelled at most places in the tsunami affected south Asian countries even as rescue workers and volunteers continue to find rotting corpses five days after the disaster that lashed coastal towns across 12 nations.

Locals and international volunteers continue to dig the debris of ravaged buildings to retrieve decomposed bodies across the coastal cities of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand. Mass burials are immediately held for the rotting bodies that can spread an epidemic.

Five days after the killer waves struck havoc in coastal cities in Indian Ocean, bodies of the victims were being washed ashore even as desperate families search for their loved ones.

Officials from affected nations say that the exact number of causalities would never be known.

Memorial services are being held across the nations lashed by the killer waves and religious leaders are counseling the survivors and those who lost their families in the watery fury on a Black Sunday.

Most of the dead ones in Indonesia were Muslims and they were remembered in Friday's prayers at ravaged mosques.

The BBC reported that one cleric broke down in tears as he tried to deliver his sermon in Indonesia's worst hit Aceh province.

"We're weeping now, but we can't afford to grieve for long," he said. "We have to start rebuilding our lives."

But most of the survivors do not know where to pick up the thread to rebuild their lives. They escaped the wrath of giant waves but their homes were swallowed by the gushing waters.

The survivors' thoughts wander as they lie in hospital beds, badly bruised, some with broken legs, some with serious head injuries, unable to speak. Stories of suffering writ large on the faces of survivors.

Reshpa, a woman from Car Nicobar, lost both her sons and husband. Barely able to speak, she mumbles, "I don't know why I was spared."

Most were driven to instant poverty. "We don't know where to go. We don't even have any clothes to wear, save some donated by individuals and voluntary organizations," a young woman Caroline said.

Even as survivors battle with trauma and loss of life and property, world leaders stepping up aid efforts to help nearly five million rendered homeless across the affected regions.

United Nations chief Kofi Annan and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell are to discuss aid efforts as rescuers struggle to bring vital supplies to remote areas that have little or no drinking water or food supplies.

"This is an unprecedented global catastrophe that requires an unprecedented global response," Annan said Thursday.

"It has registered deeply in the consciousness and conscience of the world as we seek to grasp the speed, the force and the magnitude with which it happened. The impact will be felt for a long time to come."

More than $900 million international aid has been pledged by several countries and financial institutions. Britain boosted its pledge from $30 million to $95 million, and the World Bank added $250 million to the $250 million pledged by the international community.

Indonesia planned to hold a donor summit on Jan. 6.

Airports of Indonesia and Sri Lanka are clogged with tons of relief supplies but volunteers complain that a lack of coordination between the government agencies is hampering the speedy distribution of aid material to the affected regions. Lack of transport is a major reason since most roads have been washed away.

In Sri Lanka, some 1.2 million displaced people have become restive because of the slow pace of relief distribution in the north, east and south of this island nation.

Aid is slowly trickling in to the devastated areas as measles, dehydration and other communicable diseases have begun spreading in the refugee camps with doctors saying that they have found children suffering from measles.

Desperate survivors in Indonesia also fought over aid and relief material and several incidents of looting were reported in Banda Aceh.

The United States continue to feel the heat for offering what is called a little money to help the tsunami disaster victims. Washington had initially offered $15 million but later hiked the aid to $35 million.

Jan Egeland, the emergency relief coordinator for the United Nations, had said that Western nations have been "stingy" in offering relief money.

President George W. Bush had said Wednesday that criticisms of rich nations not giving enough for disaster relief were misguided.

"I assure those leaders that this is just only the beginning of our help," he said. "I felt like the person who made that statement was very misguided and ill-informed," Bush said.

"In the year 2004, our government provided $2.4 billion in food and cash and humanitarian relief. That's 40 percent of all the relief aid given in the world last year."

However, the New York Times nailed Washington's efforts in an editorial that supported Egeland's views.

The Times said on Thursday that that the $15m initially offered by Washington was less than the figure the ruling Republican Party would spend on President George W. Bush's inauguration in January.

"We beg to differ," said the New York Times. "Mr. Egeland was right on target."

"We hope Secretary of State Colin Powell was privately embarrassed when, two days into a catastrophic disaster that hit 12 of the world's poorer countries and will cost billions of dollars to meliorate, he held a press conference to say that America, the world's richest nation, would contribute $15m," The Times said, adding, that $35m remains "a miserly drop in the bucket."

The tsunami disaster may bring the Sri Lankan authorities and rebels together on one platform to rebuild the devastated coastal areas.

Addressing a public rally in the capital Colombo, President Chandrika Kumaratunga called upon the people to unite to deal with the disaster of mammoth proportions.

"The natural disaster has not spared anyone. All communities have suffered and its time we all forget our differences and work together to rebuild the nation," she said.

"We too are mourning," said Jagadesan, a resident of the northern Jaffna peninsula, which was once the citadel of the Tamil Tigers. "We are Sri Lankans and this country is mourning so we too mourn."

The separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who have been criticizing the government for not sending adequate supplies to the areas administered by them in the north and east, have also decided to work with the government. A delegation of government officials met LTTE leaders and came to an agreement that the two sides will join hands in providing relief to the people.

While visiting the eastern districts President Kumaratunga shook hands with two LTTE women cadres she found working in a community kitchen.

"The disaster is bringing the two sides together," said Ananda Samarasinge, a driver in the capital Colombo. "We all hope and pray that this country remains united and the ethnic problem is resolved."

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(United Press International's Colombo correspondent Ravi R. Prasad contributed to this report)