Quake, tsunami toll passes 144 000

The number of people killed in the massive earthquake and tidal waves that hit Indian Ocean shorelines a week ago passed 144 000 on Monday.

Indonesia has borne the brunt of the December 26 catastrophe, with a Health Ministry official putting the country’s dead at 94 081. Entire coastal villages disappeared under the wall of water.

The figure could rise substantially. The Health Ministry has cautioned that there could be 100 000 deaths in Aceh and North Sumatra.

In Sri Lanka, 29 957 were confirmed killed by the tidal waves, while a further 5 740 were listed as missing, the president’s office said.

The official toll in India stood at 15 275, comprising 9 749 confirmed fatalities and a further 5 796 who are missing, many of them presumed dead, the government said on Monday.

In Thailand, Interior Ministry figures put the death toll at 5 046 — 2 459 foreigners, 2 287 Thais and 300 whose race could not be established.

It said 3 810 are missing, eight days after the waves hit resorts and fishing villages in six provinces along the Andaman Sea coast. Officials say most of these are presumed dead.

In Myanmar, at least 90 people were killed, according to the United Nations, but the real toll is expected to be far higher.

At least 75 people were killed and another 42 were confirmed missing in the tourist paradise of the Maldives, President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom said.

Sixty-eight people were dead in Malaysia, most of them in Penang, police said.

In Bangladesh, a father and child were killed after a tourist boat capsized in large waves, officials said.

Fatalities also occurred on the east coast of Africa where 176 people were declared dead in Somalia, 10 in Tanzania and one in Kenya.

The United States 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.

Woman rescued after five days at sea

Meanwhile, reports Sean Yoong from Kuala Lumpur, a Malaysian tuna ship rescued an Indonesian woman who drifted for five days in the Indian Ocean after the tsunami swept her out to sea from her home on Sumatra island, an official said on Monday.

The unidentified woman in her twenties was spotted alive on Friday floating in waters near Aceh province, a spokesperson for the Malaysian International Tuna Port said on condition of anonymity.

The woman, who suffered leg injuries and was extremely weak, arrived for medical treatment on Monday afternoon at Malaysia’s north-western Penang island, the spokesperson said.

No other details were immediately available.

Two more South Africans confirmed dead

The bodies of two more South Africans have been found in Thailand, bringing the total number of tsunami deaths to seven, the Department of Foreign Affairs said on Monday.

Spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa said the department is working with the families of the victims to arrange when to repatriate the bodies to South Africa.

”I don’t have any more details at the moment,” he said. ”We will only know the victims’ gender and where they were from later today [Monday].”

Johannesburg tourist Paul Sender was found dead in Thailand on Sunday.

His brother, Steven, identified 28-year-old Paul’s body at a hospital mortuary on Krabi Island on Sunday morning.

On Sunday, the body of a fifth South African was found. The Foreign Affairs consular office in Thailand indicated that the man’s body had been found on Krabi island.

The bodies of the others were repatriated aboard a mercy flight on Wednesday.

There are still about seven South Africans unaccounted for, most of them in Thailand. The two South Africans feared missing in India had been found, he said. — Sapa, Sapa-AFP, Sapa-AP

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