Tsunami News & Photos

QUAKE TOLL STILL RISING - SKY NEWS - 17:06

The number of people reported dead following the tidal wave disaster in south Asia has risen to more than 23,000 with tens of thousands still missing.

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The Foreign Office has confirmed the deaths of 13 Britons, 10 of them in Thailand.

Emergency workers are continuing to find more bodies but rescue and recovery efforts have been hampered by more aftershocks and waves.

Tens of thousands of people are still unaccounted for and millions have been left homeless by the 30-foot tsunami.

The giant wave was triggered by an earthquake on Boxing Day measuring 9 on the Richter scale.

The epicentre was 90 miles off the southern coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

A total of eight countries were hit by the tsunami, with Indonesia, the east coast of India, Sri Lanka and Thailand the worst affected.

The 300mph-plus wave even reached East Africa, nearly 3,000 miles from quake.




The scene in Phuket


Some 30,000 are still missing on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands near the epicentre.

In Sri Lanka more than 11,000 people died. A large number were children and the elderly.

More than 10,000 are feared dead in Indonesia, many in the Aceh province near the northern tip of Sumatra Island.

More than 6,300 were killed in south-east India and around 2,000 people in the south of Thailand, mainly foreign tourists.

The surge of water also hit the neighbouring country of Burma, where 30 people were killed.

In Malaysia, 52 people are reported to have drowned on the tourist island of Penang. Many of them were foreign tourists swimming or riding jetskis.

In the Maldives, 43 were killed after water inundated the low-lying string of islands.

More than 100 people are feared dead in Somalia, a number that is expected to rise.