MALDIVES: Authorities on the Maldives said yesterday 52 people, including two British tourists, had drowned in tsunami waves that struck the Indian Ocean archipelago on Sunday. Six of its 200 inhabited islands have been evacuated completely.
Close to 70 people are still missing as search operations continued into the night, and officials said they feared the death toll could rise dramatically.
The Maldives, whose white sand beaches and world-class scuba diving are a magnet for honeymooners and well-heeled tourists from around the globe, declared a state of emergency on Sunday after tsunami waves deluged the remote island cluster and flooded two-thirds of the capital Male.
"Over 50 people are dead, about 70 people are still missing and thousands have been left homeless," President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom told the BBC's World Service. "Communications with most of the country have now been restored, but still some islands are without telecommunications," he added.
"We have a lot of difficulties at the moment because our resources are quite limited, so sending help to islands have been a problem."
Mr Gayoom has spent much of his 26 years in power warning of the dangers that global warming, erosion and shifting weather patterns pose to low-lying island nations like his own.
The chain of 1,200 tiny palm-fringed coral islands, dotted across 500 miles off the toe of India, lies just a few feet above sea level.
The country's international airport was closed down on Sunday as tsunami waves wreaked havoc but was reopened after water levels receded.
Male, which is 1.25 miles long and half a mile wide and home to 75,000 people, is bursting at the seams. The capital's streets of white-washed houses are very cramped and areas of communal open space sparse for residents - so much so that the government is building a brand new island from scratch as an overflow.
Most of the Maldives' 300,000 mostly Sunni Muslim people are involved in the tourist industry, the nation's economic backbone.
The 200 inhabited islands are home on average to just a few hundred people, or house luxury tourist resorts which offer some of south Asia's most expensive holiday accommodation.
"Four resorts have been badly affected . . . we have moved about 300 tourists from badly affected resorts," government spokesman Mr Ahmed Shaheed said.
Elsewhere in Asia, the death toll topped 22,000 yesterday in the aftermath of the tsunami that slammed into coasts from India to Indonesia.
The tsunami came just days ahead of December 31st parliamentary elections in the Maldives. It was not immediately clear if the elections would be delayed. - (Reuters)