Tsunami toll nears 158 000

2005-01-11 19:33

Jakarta - The number of people killed when an earthquake and tsunamis devastated Indian Ocean coastlines on December 26 rose to 157 595 on Tuesday as Indonesia added another 1 200 to its death toll.

Hardest-hit Indonesia has now reported 105 262 fatalities, with 10 046 people still missing, the social affairs ministry said.

The ministry said the largest death toll was in the almost completely destroyed town of Meulaboh on the remote northwest coast of Sumatra island were 28 251 people died.

Aid workers on the ground say many more bodies are yet to be collected.

Another seven were added to the number killed in Sri Lanka, taking the toll to 30 725 confirmed dead, the government said.

The number of people reported missing jumped from 4 939 to 5 903, latest government figures showed on Monday.

In neighbouring India, the official toll stood 10 151 with 5 628 still missing and feared dead.

The death toll in Thailand on Monday rose by six to 5 309. But 3 370 people remain missing more than two weeks after the tsunami.

Myanmar's Prime Minister Soe Win said on Thursday 59 people were killed in the tsunamis and more than 3 200 left homeless. This was down from the UN's estimated 90.

At least 82 people were killed and another 26 were missing in the Maldives, a government spokesperson said.

Sixty-eight people were dead in Malaysia, most of them in Penang, according to police, while in Bangladesh a father and child were killed after a tourist boat capsised in large waves, officials said.

Fatalities also occurred on the east coast of Africa where 298 people were declared dead in Somalia, 10 in Tanzania and one in Kenya.

The US Geological Survey said the earthquake west of the Indonesian island of Sumatra measured 9.0 on the Richter scale - making it the largest quake worldwide in four decades.

- AFP