Number of victims in Indonesia likely to top 25,000

The official death toll stood at 5000, but Vice President Yusuf Kallaas predicted today that five times as many may have died, with another 100,000 injured.

He was speaking as survivors on Sumatra struggled to bury their dead and desperate residents looted shops.

As medicine and other emergency supplies began arriving in the island’s worst-hit province of Aceh, scores of corpses lay uncollected on the streets, triggering fears of an outbreak of disease.

"There is no help, it is each person for themselves here," said district official Tengku Zulkarnain in the town of Meulaboh on the island’s devastated western coast.

Rescue teams have yet to visit large parts of Aceh, especially along its western coast.

Initial reports say that miles of villages along the coast were swept away. Meulaboh has been razed, said residents.

"People are looting but not because they are evil, but they are hungry," said Red Cross official Irman Rachmat in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh. "We don’t have enough people to bury the dead. We are worried that all the corpses on the streets will lead to disease."

The military said it had sent three planes of emergency supplies to Aceh. The UN in Jakarta said 175 tons of rice arrived in the province last night, and that it expected to fly in medical supplies on Thursday.

The quake and tsunami has devastated much of the province’s infrastructure, and distribution of supplies to its 4.3 million people will be difficult, foreign aid workers warned.

"We have not been given drinking water or medicine," said Aminah, one of 3000 refugees living in tents in the northern Aceh city of Lhokseumawe.

Aceh has been wracked by a separatist war for the past 26 years, and Jakarta had banned foreign journalists and international aid agency representatives from visiting the region. But the government yesterday lifted the ban, and said it would welcome aid.