Quake, tsunamis kill more than 26,000
Thousands still missing as search for survivors continues
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| | DEATH TOLLS | SRI LANKA
Sri Lankan military authorities report more than 10,000 people killed. Tamil Tiger rebels report 2,000 dead in the territory they hold in the northeast of the country.
INDIA
At least 6,200 killed by waves that flooded the southern coast, official media report.
INDONESIA
News agencies report more than 4,350 killed, many of them in Aceh in northern Sumatra.
THAILAND
Thai authorities report at least 866 people dead.
MALDIVES
46 people are dead and more than 70 missing, according to Hassan Sobir, the Maldives high commissioner.
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| HOTLINE NUMBERS | India: +91 11 2309 3054
Thailand: +66 21672
Sri Lanka (residents): +94 11 536 1938
Sri Lanka (tourists): +94 11 243 7061
Maldives: +44 20 7224 2149
Seychelles: +248 321 676
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 VIDEO |
 Tens of thousands of people have been killed and left homeless across Asia.
 In southern Thailand, paradise turned into a nightmare. Hear a tsunami survivor's story.
 ITN's John Irvine was on vacation in Sri Lanka when the tsunamis hit
 The relationship between earthquakes and tsunamis.
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(CNN) -- People across Asia are flocking to makeshift morgues seeking lost loved ones after tsunamis swept across the Indian Ocean from Thailand to Somalia, killing more than 26,000 people.
The giant waves also left thousands injured and missing as well as hundreds of thousands homeless in Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand.
Authorities across the region are running out of places to put the dead -- lining them up in schools and stacking them in the street -- as food aid and other supplies for survivors are making their way to affected areas.
The United Nations is asking donor countries to dig deeper, saying this will likely be the costliest disaster ever.
The magnitude 9.0 quake struck about 7 a.m. Sunday (0000 GMT Saturday) and was centered about 100 miles (160 kilometers) off the coast of Indonesia's Sumatra island at a depth of about 6.2 miles (10 kilometers).
Nearly 48 hours later, no one was under any illusion that the death toll would not rise significantly. (Disease threat)
The head of the United Nations' emergency humanitarian relief agency said the tsunamis were unprecedented and that it could take years to rebuild some places that were wiped out.
The tsunamis are "not the biggest in recorded history, but the effects may be the biggest ever because many more people live in exposed areas than ever before," said Jan Egeland, undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief.
With tens of thousands dead, many missing and millions displaced, still more serious problems lie ahead, Egeland said, including widespread illnesses.
Asian government officials conceded Monday that they failed to issue public warnings that could have saved many lives. (Full story)
More than 10,000 people have been reported dead in Sri Lanka. Most of them were in the eastern district of Batticaloa, authorities said.
Thousands were missing, an estimated 1 million were displaced and an estimated 250,000 were homeless.
The Sri Lankan government declared a state of emergency, and, along with the government of the Maldives, requested international assistance, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported.
Some 20,000 Sri Lankan soldiers and naval personnel have launched relief and rescue efforts.
India sent six warships carrying supplies, along with helicopters. Priorities included identifying the hardest-hit areas, airdropping supplies and shepherding stranded people to safer areas.
Italy, France and Pakistan also sent help to Sri Lanka.
The country has been in the throes of a civil war, and land mines uprooted by the tidal waves were hampering relief efforts. But Jeffrey Lunstead, the U.S. ambassador to Sri Lanka, said he was told the Tamil Tiger rebels in the northeast and government forces were cooperating in the aftermath of the disaster.
"That's a good sign," he told CNN.
India and Pakistan also sent equipment to the Maldives, according to the country's high commissioner, Hassan Sobir. He told CNN that communication had been re-established with the northernmost of the widely scattered islands south of India -- most rising barely 5 feet above sea level -- but the southern islands remained "out of reach."
"The entire Maldives, I think, for a moment disappeared from the planet Earth," he said. "Some islands may have completely disappeared, we don't know yet. But all the islands have been affected."
India also was reeling from the aftermath of the quake and tsunamis. Press Trust of India, the government news agency, said at least 6,200 Indians were killed and more bodies were being recovered.
Along India's southeastern coast, several villages were swept away, and thousands of fishermen who were at sea when the waves thundered ashore have not returned.
Monday, grieving relatives buried or cremated their dead. Along the coast, brick foundations were all that remained of village homes.
In Tamil Nadu state, 2,500 people have been confirmed dead, and officials said 3,000 died on the remote Andaman and Nicobar islands, where dozens of aftershocks were centered.
Efforts to provide survivors with food and shelter were hampered by the overwhelming magnitude of the damage.
Thai authorities said at least 866 people were dead and hundreds missing along the country's west coast -- home to 40 percent of Thailand's $10 billion tourist industry.
Tourists described the shock of being on a paradise island one moment and swimming in a living hell the next.
John Irvine of Britain's ITN television was enjoying the beach Sunday morning and ran into his bungalow to get a camera. When he returned, he saw "this wall of water heading our way, and my wife screamed to me."
"She grabbed our daughter, and I looked frantically for my 5-year-old son," Irvine told CNN. "He was looking out to sea. He was mesmerized, hypnotized by the wall of water."
Irvine said he grabbed the boy and "ran as hard as I could."
"And then I could hear the rush behind me," he said. "I looked and I could see the wall of water coming towards us. ... The wave caught up with us ... and it washed us, I guess, another 50 yards into a mangrove swamp. We were very lucky not to be hit by all the debris that there was. I mean, it was carrying small boats with it, carrying logs, masonry. It was a terrifying experience."
The Thai government set up a tourist relief center and domestic relief centers.
Indonesia may have been the worst hit of all. Information from Aceh province -- closest to the epicenter, which was about 100 miles off the coast -- has been slow in coming because communications were cut off and because of a rebel insurgency based in the area.
On Monday evening, Vice President Muhammad Yusuf Kalla returned from a trip to the province's capital, Banda Aceh, and said the devastation there was much worse than expected and that the death toll could reach 5,000 to 10,000 in the capital alone.
At least 4,350 people are reported dead in Indonesia, officials said.
The government was arranging food, water and medicine for the shattered region and was staging relief efforts from Medan on the west coast. But the lack of communications in Banda Aceh was problematic.
Reports returned with the vice president that the city's infrastructure was wiped out and that military and police equipment was destroyed. The chief of police in Banda Aceh said 400 of his officers were killed in a police dormitory.
In the Maldives, 46 people are dead and more than 70 missing, according to Hassan Sobir, the Maldives high commissioner.
As far away as Somalia on Africa's east coast, there were reports of swimmers and fishermen being swept out to sea.
Among the dead are at least 61 from outside the region.
That number includes 13 Italians, 11 Britons, 10 Norwegians, 8 Americans, 6 Australians, 6 French, 4 Austrians, and 3 Danes, officials from those countries were reported by The Associated Press as saying, with hundreds more reported missing.
No warning
The tsunamis struck with no warning to those in coastal areas -- particularly Indonesia, so close to the source -- as no warning system exists for the Indian Ocean, said Eddie Bernard, director of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine and Environmental Labs in Seattle, Washington.
Such tsunamis are much more common around the Pacific Rim than in the Indian Ocean.
The quake represented the energy released from a rupture in the earth's crust more than 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) long, the U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) said.
It was the strongest earthquake since 1964 and tied a 1952 quake in Kamchatka, Russia, as the fourth-strongest since such measurements began in 1899.
The quake hit a year after the 6.6-magnitude quake in Bam, Iran, which killed more than 30,000 people, injured another 30,000 and destroyed 85 percent of the buildings in the city.
CNN's Aneesh Raman in Phuket, Thailand; Satinder Bindra in Colombo, Sri Lanka; Atika Shubert in Jakarta, Indonesia; and Suhasini Haidar in Chennai, India, contributed to this report.
Copyright 2004 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
