Red Cross predicts death toll to top 100,000

BANDA ACEH, INDONESIA - Reeking corpses rotted in the tropical sun from India to Indonesia on Wednesday and many who escaped death from one of the worst tsunamis in history fought for survival against thirst and disease.

Rescuers scoured remote coastlines around the Indian Ocean for survivors of Sunday's colossal seawater surge triggered by an earthquake that caused an arc of death across southern Asia and may have made the world wobble on its axis.

"I would not be at all surprised that we will be on 100,000 (deaths) when we know what has happened on the (Indian) Andaman and Nicobar islands," Peter Rees of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said.

The federation currently puts the death toll at 77,828, making it one of the world's worst natural disasters.

In parts of India's Tamil Nadu state, officials gave up counting the dead in their hurry to bury them in mass graves. The stench of death hung over stricken coastal villages.

The United Nations mobilised its biggest relief operation amid fears that cholera and diarrhoea could worsen the death toll. The World Health Organisation said five million people lacked the essentials of food, water and sanitation to survive.

"There is no food here whatsoever. We need rice. We need petrol. We need medicine," Vaiti Usman, an Indonesian woman in Indonesia's devastated Aceh province where tens of thousands died, said.

"I haven't eaten in two days."

In many areas, health experts said the relief operation looked woefully inadequate with shortages of coffins, equipment and medicine, while emergency workers struggled with power outages, destroyed communications and badly damaged roads.

A harrowing race was on for relatives to find loved ones.

One Swedish boy on a family holiday to the Thai resort of Phuket was shown in a news photograph clutching a piece of paper. On it was scrawled: "Missing parents and two brothers."

Disease could kill as many people as the tsunami, health experts said as the full extent of the tragedy began to unfold.

"I have lost three brothers, four sisters, and my father is missing," wept 18-year-old Tamil fisherman Rajan Xavier.

Scandinavia and Germany, fond of Asia as a winter refuge, faced the fact that the tsunami had turned the tropical paradise into hell for hundreds of friends and loved ones.

More than 2000 Scandinavians and about 1000 Germans were still missing on Wednesday, a full three days after disaster struck. At least 600 Italians were missing.

Primitive tribes on India's remote Andaman and Nicobar islands were running out of the coconuts they were living on, with whole communities wiped out.