100 Britons Are Feared To Have Lost Their Lives (Tsunami)

The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 12-30-2004 | Sebastien Berger/Richard Alleyne

[blam]

100 Britons are feared to have lost their lives

By Sebastien Berger in Phuket and Richard Alleyne
(Filed: 30/12/2004)

More than 100 British tourists are now feared dead, officials said last night.

Publicly the Foreign and Commonwealth office in London was confirming that the official death total stood at 26 - three in the Maldives, three in Sri Lanka and 20 in Thailand.

A woman views pictures of casualties on a noticeboard in Krabi, Thailand

But according to officials abroad, the figure was closer to 50 and expected to more than double as bodies were identified.

The number of British victims rose sharply after the Thai authorities said 43 had died when the tsunami surged through the nation's busy southern tourist resorts on Sunday.

Thai officials said that 1,829 people had been confirmed dead, with a further 5,288 missing - half of them foreign tourists.

A spokesman for the British Embassy's operations centre in Phuket said: "The casualty numbers are steadily rising.

"We have a large number of unconfirmed deaths, combined with an even larger number of people reported missing.

"There are large numbers of bodies on Phi Phi island and Khao Lak; hundreds and hundreds of bodies of Westerners and Thais."

The Maldives high commissioner to the UK said he did not expect any more British deaths to be confirmed.

A spokesman for the High Commission in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo said it was "difficult to tell" whether the number of British casualties there would increase.

Dozens of Britons are still unaccounted for. Most are backpackers but First Choice, the package tour operator, said it had six people missing in Thailand.

The Association of British Travel Agents estimated that 100 Britons were still missing.

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said that a team of experts was flying to the region to help identify bodies of British tourists.