Asian tsunami 'an unprecedented global catastrophe', says Annan

UN secretary-general Kofi Annan told reporters on Thursday: "This is an unprecedented, global catastrophe and it requires an unprecedented, global response,"

UN officials said up to five million people were without basic services.

UN emergency relief co-ordinator Jan Egeland said :"We could be in a situation that more children could die from diarrhoea in the next weeks than those who were killed by the tsunami."

* The United States weather agency didn't have the phone numbers or staff to alert all Indian Ocean coastal countries when it saw the first signs that tsunamis could be heading their way, its top official said. And he warned that the Caribbean and Atlantic also lack an early-warning system.

"We cannot watch tsunamis in the Indian Ocean," said Conrad C. Lautenbacher, the Commerce Department's Under-secretary for oceans and atmosphere. "Folks out there tried to contact people that they thought would be interested ... they did what they thought at the time were the most prudent things to do."

* "Some cars come by and throw food like that. The fastest get the food, the strong one wins. The elderly and the injured don't get anything. We feel like dogs." - Usman, 43, describing the relief situation in Banda Aceh, Indonesia.

* "They are all Tamil and almost all of them lived in homes along the coastline. Now they are too scared to return to the sea but they will not move into Muslim areas as they feel unable to. It is a very sensitive situation here." - Dr Thamilvannan Nallaratnam on the plight of displaced villagers in Ampara, Sri Lanka

* "That earthquake has changed the map. Based on seismic modelling, some of the smaller islands off the southwest coast of Sumatra may have moved to the south-west by about 20 metres. That is a lot of slip." - Ken Hudnutt of the US Geological Survey.

* "We had a mortuary in the complex and we had - just in our little area - I think 10 bodies, some of who were Sri Lankan. We did bury the bodies, the Sri Lankans buried theirs, we all dug the grave together, Sri Lankans and Europeans. But the Sri Lankans wanted to take their own people to their own homes." - Tanya Smart, from East Sussex, who was with her family in the Sri Lankan resort of Unawatuna.

* "I climbed to the roof, there were lots of children everywhere grabbing hold of me and then I saw the second wave come and push the carriage towards a house. I managed to jump on to the house by which time there were lots of dead bodies everywhere, lots of children.

* "I thought it was just a freak tide, I thought the water level was going to go out and any minute now there would be help." - Shenth Ravindra, 25, a survivor of the train that was wrecked in Sri Lanka.

* "There is not much we can do, but we have to do what little we can. The worst thing is not to know what has happened. That's why we have to go down there." - Brothers Christoph and Espen Wernersen, who travelled from Sweden to Khao Lak in Thailand to look for a third brother, his wife and their two children aged six and nine.

They abandoned their harrowing search through the improvised morgues, because the decomposing bodies were unrecognisable.

* "It's so weird, I'm angry at the bodies. I'm angry at them because they just don't stop coming. You know why it's easy to handle these? They don't even look human any more. They look like blow-up dolls." - Marko Cunningham, a Liverpool-born New Zealander at Khao Lak Beach, Thailand.

* "Everybody loved him. He had a heart of gold and was such a caring kid. How are you supposed to get on with your life after something like that ... he kills you with love and then goes." - Ivana Giardina of Melbourne, whose 16-year old son Paul, who had Down syndrome, was drowned when the tsunami swept through their Phuket hotel.