Devastating Asian tsunami darkens world's New Year

Indonesia - Aircraft, naval vessels and trucks struggled on Friday to deliver aid around stricken southern Asia as the death toll hit 124,000 from a devastating tsunami that darkened the world's New Year.

Jan Egeland, the U.N. emergency relief coordinator, said the toll "may be approaching 150,000" as the United States increased its aid pledge tenfold to $350 million.

The emergency relief operation, probably the biggest in history, was up against debris-clogged harbors, power outages, washed-away roads and shattered towns in a race to save millions from dehydration and disease and halt a spiraling death toll.

"The vast majority of those are in Indonesia and Aceh, which is the least assessed area because of logistical constraints, and (the toll) may therefore rise further," Egeland said.

Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds had even said the toll could hit 200,000. "Boats are arriving from the islands loaded with (dead) people," she said after visiting Thailand.

Torrential rains in Sri Lanka cut off roads that had survived Sunday's colossal sea surge, keeping vital aid from hundreds of thousands in a nation that lost about 29,000 people.

"Even the gods are crying," said one hotelier in the city of Batticaloa. From Buddhist monks in robes to Tamil Tiger rebels, Sri Lanka canceled New Year celebrations and stopped to mourn.

In Khao Lak, Thailand, where more than 2,200 foreign tourists are known to have died, weary volunteers and aid workers piled body after bloated body into temporary mortuaries.

"They just keep coming," said New Zealander Marko Cunningham at a makeshift mortuary in a Buddhist temple, five days after the tsunami, triggered by a magnitude 9.0 quake off Indonesia.

In Indonesia's Aceh province, where government officials said the toll may rise to 100,000 from 80,000, troops guarded fuel stations as the stench of death filled the air. Handwritten signs on poles and fences read: "Please help. Give us aid."

Rice sacks were stacked along the walls of a house guarded by a dozen armed soldiers in the city of Banda Aceh.

"Not since the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 have we been hit so hard by the devastating wrath of nature," President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said in a New Year speech. Krakatoa's volcanic eruption and the ensuing tsunami killed 36,000 people.-- Reuters

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