Anxious wait for relatives of missing tourists

December 31, 2004 - 10:28AM

The Indian Ocean tsunami killed at least 2230 foreigners in Thailand, most of them in the devastated Khao Lak resort and on other southern beaches, officials said yesterday.

The latest death toll was issued as foreign forensic teams began the gruesome task of identifying victims, a job made all the more daunting by the sheer number of bodies piling up in morgues.

The rising toll will add to the misery of anxious relatives of tourists, many of them Europeans who had traded a cold, dark winter for the warmth of Thailand's Andaman Sea shores.

The figures showed that Khao Lak, once lined with luxury hotels but now a scene of smashed buildings, wrecked cars and rescuers retrieving corpses, was Thailand's worst-hit area.

German, Swiss, Dutch, Australian and other forensic teams were helping identify the bodies.

"It will be challenging," said Karl Kent, head of a 17-member Australian Federal Police team.

"The scale is of a magnitude that Australia and other countries have not experienced," he said.

While the Thais wanted to bury bodies decomposing fast in the tropical heat and piling up quickly, diplomats insisted that no unidentified body should be buried.

The diplomats won the argument, with Thai Deputy Health Minister Suchai Charoenratanakul backing them.

The death toll across Asia from Sunday's Indian Ocean tsunami, triggered by a huge earthquake off Indonesia, has soared to more than 120,000.

Some governments, especially Sweden which said it feared more than 1000 Swedes may have been killed, are under pressure to find out just how many of their people are among the 6130 that Thailand says are still missing.

Experts in Thailand fear some of the badly decomposed bodies, many wearing only what they had on when the tsunami struck, may never be identified.

The forensic teams will collect dental evidence and DNA samples, take fingerprints, photographs and X-rays, and will look for jewellery or documents that may help identify bodies.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra promised refrigerated containers to meet an immediate need to preserve bodies.

Police say more than 1800 bodies have been recovered from Khao Lak.

They believe as many as 3000 people may have been killed around Khao Lak when the wall of water swept up the gently sloping beach - an ideal family holiday spot.

It smashed into a line of luxury hotels and ploughed up to 1km inland from a beach particularly popular among Scandinavians and Germans.

Aid teams were starting to worry about the possibility of disease breaking out on the coast, where sources of drinking water are likely to have been contaminated by sea water.

Khao Lak is yielding at least 300 bodies a day, despite a search and rescue operation that officials acknowledge is struggling to cope in a country that rarely suffers natural disasters worse than floods during the annual monsoon.

Most of the bodies are beyond recognition and survivors searching for loved ones are faced with gruesome mosaics of photographs at Buddhist temples used as temporary morgues.

For some, there are no photographs - only possessions such as watches, rings and mobile telephones for identification.

Briton Rob Ward was handing out photographs of the young son of a friend.

"It would be some comfort for the parents to know definitely what happened," he said.

Dead and missing by country

Austria 5 (16)
Australia 10 (41)
Belgium 5 (274)
Brazil 2
Britain 28
Canada 3 (13)
China 7
Croatia 1 (9)
Czech Republic 100
Denmark**** 7 (24)
Finland 14 (263)
France 22 (96)
Germany* 33 (1000)
Greece 9
Iceland 11
Ireland 20
Israel 12
Italy***** 14 (700)
Japan 9
Luxembourg 11
Malta 1
Mexico 4
Netherlands 5
New Zealand 1 (279)
Norway** 21 (462)
Poland 4 (43)
Portugal 8
Russia*** 1
Singapore 7 (227)
South Africa 4 (16)
South Korea 8 (8)
Spain 11
Sweden 44 (2500)
Switzerland# 12
Taiwan 1
Turkey 53
United States 11
TOTALS: 271 (6218)

NOTES: * Germany - Sri Lankan authorities say they have identified four Germans among the dead, but Germany has yet to confirm the death of any of its citizens.
** Norway says up to 820 Norwegians are still unaccounted for.
*** Russia - Russia says that it has not been able to make contact with around 50 of its citizens who were in Thailand.
**** Denmark - The Danish Foreign Ministry count does not include the 200 or so Danes unaccounted for in Thailand, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and the Maldives.
***** Italy - Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini said the number of missing Italians was nearer 700 than 600 previously reported.
# Switzerland - Switzerland says 850 tourists are unaccounted for but only a certain number of these were now considered to be officially missing.
(This count does not incorporate figures provided by Thai officials saying at least 2230 foreigners killed there)