Terror attack fears as toll hits 175,000

ASIA’S tsunami death toll soared past 175,000 yesterday as Sri Lanka confirmed thousands more dead, while fears emerged over the safety of aid workers in Indonesia’s shattered Aceh province.

Denmark said it had information that "imminent" terror attacks were planned against aid workers in Aceh, where United States and other foreign troops have joined relief teams clearing rubble from the 26 December disaster which killed 115,000 in that province alone.

"We have received information from sources abroad that somebody would be planning an attack today," said Niels Erik Andersen, a Danish foreign ministry official.

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Indonesia’s foreign minister dismissed the report as "unfounded rumour", but the warning prompted the United Nations to announce a state of "heightened awareness" for its relief workers in Indonesia. The UN had earlier banned its foreign staff from travelling between Banda Aceh and Medan because of reported fighting between the Indonesian military and separatist rebels in the area.

Paul Wolfowitz, the US deputy defence secretary, urged political opponents in both Indonesia and Sri Lanka - facing a separatist rebellion of its own - to put aside their differences and concentrate on relief work.

"Hopefully they will realise on all sides that the stakes that they are fighting for are relatively trivial," he said on arriving in Sri Lanka, where officials yesterday said another 7,275 people were now known to have died in the catastrophe. A total of 38,195 casualties have now been reported on the island.

During a visit to a village near Galle, in southern Sri Lanka, Mr Wolfowitz clambered over rubble to reach a group of women waiting outside a school.

"We are very sorry about what happened. The whole world wants to help you, my country especially," he said.

A British forensic scientist yesterday described the harrowing scenes faced by teams dispatched to the Indian Ocean to identify those killed by the disaster. Dr Roger Summers, of the University of Derby, spent 16 days in Phuket, Thailand, where tens of thousands of corpses were piled up in makeshift morgues.

"It was something I will never forget," he said. "There were 100,000 corpses around us and time was against us to try to identify people, as quickly as possible, for the sake of loved ones they had left behind.

"The stench of death was dreadful and it’s something no-one could ever be prepared for."