Last Update: Sunday, December 26, 2004. 11:06pm (AEDT)
A view of the damage caused by a tsunami at Patong beach in Phuket. (Reuters)
"The world's fifth-largest quake in a century hit southern Asia today, unleashing a tsunami that crashed into Sri Lanka and India, drowning thousands and swamping tourist isles in Thailand and the Maldives.
A wall of water up to 10 metres high triggered by the 8.9 magnitude earthquake swept into Indonesia, over the coast of Sri Lanka and India and across southern Thai tourist islands, leaving up to 3,100 feared dead in seaside towns and villages.
Two-thirds of the Maldives capital, Male, was flooded and officials voiced anxiety for the fate of dozens of low-lying, palm-ringed coral atolls crowded with international tourists for the Christmas holiday season.
Sri Lanka, where officials put the death toll at 1,500, appealed for emergency international assistance, President Chandrika Kumaratunga's office said.
One million people, or 5 per cent of the population, were affected, officials said.
"The president has declared a state of national disaster due to the seriousness of the situation," her office said.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh alerted the navy after 1,000 were reported dead and offered urgent help to Sri Lanka.
The earthquake of magnitude 8.9 as measured by the US Geological Survey first struck at 7:59am local time off the coast of the northern Indonesian island of Sumatra and swung north with multiple tremors into the Andaman islands.
More than 100 Western and Asian tourists on diving holidays were missing on islands off southern Thailand, about 70 of them in the famed Emeral Cave, a tourist official said.
The Government sent helicopters to Koh Phi Phi, another island popular with tourists, and other smaller islands in the Andaman Sea to assess the damage in the peak holiday season.
It ordered the evacuation of stricken areas, which included beaches on the popular resort islands of Phuket and Krabi.
"Nothing like this has ever happened in our country before," said Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
The earthquake was the world's biggest since 1964, said Julie Martinez, geophysicist at the US Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado. "It is multiple earthquakes along the same faultline."
It was the fifth-largest earthquake since 1900, she said.
"These big earthquakes, when they occur in shallow water, ... basically slosh the ocean floor ... and it's as if you're rocking water in the bathtub and that wave can travel basically throughout the ocean," USGS geophysicist Bruce Presgrave told the BBC.
In Sri Lanka, thousands fled the worst tsunami in living memory, scrambling to higher ground for fear of another wave.
"The Army and the Navy have sent rescue teams; we have deployed over four choppers and half the Navy's eastern fleet to look for survivors," said military spokesman Brigadier Daya Ratnayake.
The worst-hit area appeared to be the tourist region of the south and east where beach hotels were inundated or swept away.
"Our naval base in Trincomalee is underwater and right now we are trying to manage the situation there while rescuing people," said Navy spokesman Jayantha Perera.
In the low-lying Maldives, President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom was to declare a national disaster in the archipelago whose coral atolls are a magnet for tourists from around the world, said chief government spokesman Ahmed Shaheed.
"The damage is considerable," Mr Shaheed said. "The island is only about three feet (one metre) above sea level and a wave of water four feet (1.3 metres) high swept over us."
The international airport was unusable, he said.
"It is a very bad situation. It is terrible," Mr Shaheed said.
"As you know it is the peak tourist season. We are trying to get reports from those areas. The whole of the Maldives is a tourist area so we are just hoping and praying."
The world's worst tsunami in recent history struck on July 17, 1998, when three waves ripped through Papua New Guinea's northwest coast, killing 2,500.
At least 720 people were killed on Indonesia's Sumatra island where the wave washed people out to sea and tore children from their parents' arms, officials said.
Indonesia, an archipelago of 17,000 islands, lies along the Pacific Ring of Fire where plate boundaries intersect and volcanoes regularly erupt.
To the north in Thailand, officials reported one wave 5 to 10 metres high hit hotel-lined beaches on Phuket.
At least 120 people had been killed and more than 1,000 injured, officials said.
"It happened in cycles. There would be a surge and then it would retreat and then there would be a next surge which was more violent and it went on like that," Paul Ramsbottom, a Briton on holiday in a Phuket beach bungalow, told BBC World TV.
"Then there was this one almighty surge. I mean literally this was the one which was picking up pickup trucks and motorcycles and throwing them around in front of us," he added.
One foreigner was known to be among the dead in Krabi.
Thai television showed scenes of devastation on one Phuket beach.
Store fronts were damaged and cars and motorcycles were strewn around after being tossed about by the powerful waves.
A Thai man carried one elderly Western man in swimming trunks to safety on his back, ITV showed.
At least 1,000 people have been killed along the southern Indian coast and rescuers were searching for hundreds of fishermen missing, government officials said.
About 100 people had died in Madras alone, the city's police commissioner, K Natarajan, told reporters.
"The bodies in the hospital are mostly young women and children."
The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has set up a special hotline for people with relatives in South-East Asia and south Asia.
The number is 1 800 00 22 14."
-Reuters
In other developments:
- The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has set up a special hotline for people with relatives in South-East Asia and south Asia, where Tsunamis and earthquakes struck earlier today. (Full Story)
- At least 1,651 people were confirmed dead and many more missing in Sri Lanka as tsunami waves smashed into the island, Prime Minister's top aide and police told AFP. (Full Story)
- A total of 721 people have been confirmed dead in Indonesia from a powerful earthquake and tsunamis that struck the northern tip of Sumatra island today but the toll is expected to rise. (Full Story)
