First-hand accounts of what happened as the earthquake and tidal waves hit southern Asia have begun to emerge.
Mary Picking, a British tourist in Phuket, Thailand, told Radio 5 Live: "We saw this enormous tidal wave approaching the beach and people started to run. Suddenly it was complete chaos, people running and screaming as the waves hit."
Alison Winward, a desk editor for the weekly English language paper Phuket Gazette, said 66 people, including 20 foreign nationals, were reported dead on Phuket, a further 22 were missing and 691 injured, according to reports.
Ms Winward, 39, from the Wigan area said: "It's still not clear what's going but it seems to be the west which has borne the impact. The tidal wave also flooded a flat area near Phuket city, that's where most of the poor people live.
"People I've spoken to said quite a lot of people were on the beach this morning. Some Thai people go to the beach early, especially the girls who like to avoid the sun when it's at its hottest."
A spokeswoman for Patong Hospital said they had more than 50 bodies at the hospital and were treating around 400 people, many of them foreigners.
Another holidaymaker Nicola Barton, 33, from Surrey, was halfway through her fortnight's holiday at the Paradise Island Resort on the Maldives with her family when the water hit.
She said the area now looked like a "war zone".
"It is just horrific. There are wooden sunbeds floating round the island, chairs from the restaurants and glass smashed everywhere, bulbs from the lighting.
Simon Clark, a 29-year-old photographer from London was holidaying on the Thai island of Koh Ngai near Krabi.
"Suddenly this huge wave came, rushing down the beach, destroying everything in its wake," he said. "People that were snorkelling were dragged along the coral and washed up on the beach, and people that were sunbathing got washed into the sea."