Beach of the dead

The tourists were found in Khao Lak, part of a 20-mile stretch of beach north of Phuket where 3500 corpses have washed up.

And it is feared thousands more bodies are yet to be found.

Thailand’s death toll doubled overnight to 4500, pushing the number of casualties in the earthquake disaster to at least 126,000.

More than half of Thailand’s confirmed deaths occurred in Phang Nga province, where police say up to 3000 bodies may yet be found among the five-star hotels and poor fishing villages.

As the death toll continued to rise, cash started rolling in as world relief efforts were stepped up.

A US aircraft carrier battle group today arrived at Indonesia’s Sumatra island, which was closest to last Sunday’s quake and is home to most of the casualties.

Donations have reached nearly 280 million worldwide with 32m being raised by the British public so far. In Britain, call centres have been receiving donations from the public up to the rate of 15,000 a minute - almost 1m an hour.

The Government also drastically increased its contribution from 15m to 50m last night. More than 3.5m has been raised in Scotland. But United Nations supremo Kofi Annan warned even more cash would be needed.

US President George Bush, criticised for his slow reaction to the Asian tsunami

disaster, said he would send a delegation led by Secretary of State Colin Powell to the region on Sunday to assess the need for assistance.

The delegation, which will include the president’s brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, was due to meet regional leaders and international organisations working to bring relief to an estimated five million tsunami survivors in south-eastern and central Asia.

Rescuers were today racing against time to find survivors and identify bloated corpses still scattered widely across Thailand’s pummelled beaches, while the government announced that more than 4500 people perished in the tsunami disaster - almost half of them foreigners.

Another 6475 were missing, the Interior Ministry said. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has warned that Thailand’s death toll could approach 7000.

Rescue and identification teams from a dozen countries focused their efforts on a 20-mile stretch of beach in Phang Nga province, where Interior Minister Bhokin Balakula said the 3500 bodies had been recovered.

"They just keep coming," said weary New Zealand volunteer Marko Cunningham at one of the Buddhist temples near the beach being used as a temporary mortuarym, as a truck pulled in with another load of bloated Thai and foreign bodies.

At least 1927 foreigners died on Khao Lak, where Sunday’s giant wall of water crumpled luxury hotels whose 5000 rooms were full at the peak of the Christmas and New Year tourist season.

Thai forensic scientist Pornthip Rojchanasiri said she had no idea how long it would take to identify all the dead. "I do not know because we do not have enough equipment, people to do this job," she said.

Thai victims who have been identified were being cremated on funeral pyres.

Chinese forensic experts today joined the victim identification effort, taking tissue and hair samples for DNA testing.

"Our mission is to take samples toward DNA analysis, for example, hair and muscle tissue," said Feng Yia-Kung, who was leading the Chinese team. "We will mail the samples to our laboratory in Beijing and the DNA centre will give us results as soon as possible."

Meanwhile, thunderstorms and torrential rain today brought yet more misery to the stricken island of Sri Lanka today, hampering aid efforts.

After days of struggling to restore some sort of order to the ravaged country, survivors and rescuers faced driving rain and almost instant flooding.

It did not take long for large sections of the road between Polonnaruwa in central Sri Lanka and Batticaloa on the east coast to become awash with water.

Batticaloa, on the eastern coast, is one of the worst affected areas on the island with entire communities washed away.

Indonesia today said it would host an international tsunami summit on January 6, aimed at garnering more emergency aid for the Indian Ocean region and discussing future reconstruction needs.

Authorities today put the Indonesian death toll at 80,000 and said it was likely to top 100,000.

Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said heads of state or their special representatives from the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations, as well as China, Japan, South Korea, India, Sri Lanka, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, would be invited.

Also asked would be representatives from the United Nations, the World Bank, the World Health Organisation, Asian Development Bank and European Union.

A C-130 cargo plane touched down in Sumatra with blankets, medicine and the first of 80,000 body bags.

New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Pakistan and scores of other nations also had planes rushing aid to victims.

"This is an unprecedented global catastrophe and it requires an unprecedented global response," UN secretary-general Mr Annan said, as aid agencies warned that five million people lacked clean water, shelter, food, sanitation and medicine.

While the delivery of aid was being fast-tracked, a few survivors were still staggering out of ruined areas six days after the tsunamis. On one Indian island, people told tales of days of thirst, hunger and miles of walking until - just at the point of rescue - a hungry pack of crocodiles tried to snap them up.

The refugees lived to tell the tale, thanks to Indian seamen who shot at the menacing reptiles as the fleeing refugees made their way to a rescue ship.

As more bodies were recovered, families around the Indian Rim and beyond endured their sixth day of ignorance as to the fate of friends and relatives who had taken a holiday-season vacation to the sunny beaches of Thailand, India and Sri Lanka. Tens of thousands were still missing, including at least 2500 Swedes, more than 1000 Germans and 500 each from France and Denmark.

In Sri Lanka, where more than 4000 people are unaccounted for, television channels are devoting ten minutes every hour to read the names and details of the missing. Often photos of the missing are shown with appeals that they should contact the family or police.

On the Thai resort island of Phuket, people scoured photos pinned to noticeboards of the dead and missing in scenes reminiscent of the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in New York.

The search for loved ones on Sumatra was even less co-ordinated. One man was looking for his grandmother by checking corpse after corpse scattered over a road near her ruined home.

The delivery of aid to survivors on Sumatra speeded up with pilots dropping food to villagers stranded among bloating corpses, while police in a devastated provincial capital stripped looters of their clothing and forced them to sit on the street as a warning to others.

Another zone where officials have hardly begun to get a sense of the human cost was India’s remote Andaman and Nicobar islands, where entire villages were wiped out. With only 400 bodies found so far, the region’s administrator said 10,000 people were missing.

Governments had so far donated nearly 280m, Mr Annan said, adding that he was "satisfied" by the response, even though another UN official earlier complained that the West had been "stingy" in the past.

"Over the past few days it has registered deeply in the consciousness and conscience of the world as we seek to grasp the speed, the force and magnitude with which it happened. But we must also remain committed for the longer term," Mr Annan said.