A Thai mourner joins prayers during a candlelight vigil for tsunami victims in Phuket, Thailand.

Indonesia has borne the brunt of the catastrophe, with a Health Ministry official putting the country's dead at 94,081 with entire coastal villages disappearing under the wall of water.

The ministry has cautioned that there could be 100,000 deaths in Aceh and North Sumatra.

In Sri Lanka, 29,957 were confirmed killed by the waves while a further 5,740 were listed as missing, the president's office said.

The official toll in India stood at 15,275, comprising 9,479 confirmed fatalities and a further 5,796 missing, the government said Jan. 3.

In Thailand, Interior Ministry figures put the death toll at 5,046 -- 2,459 foreigners, 2,287 Thais and 300 whose race could not be established. It said 3,810 are missing, eight days after the waves hit resorts and fishing villages in six provinces along the Andaman Sea coast.

In Myanmar, at least 90 people were killed, according to the United Nations, but the real toll was expected to be far higher.

At least 75 people were killed and another 42 were confirmed missing in the tourist paradise of the Maldives, President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom said.

Sixty-eight people were dead in Malaysia, most of them in Penang, police said.

Fatalities occurred on the east coast of Africa where 176 people were declared dead in Somalia, 10 in Tanzania and one in Kenya.

The Japan Times Weekly: Jan. 8, 2005
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