Sri Lanka: More than one million Sri Lankans have abandoned their flooded homes and fled to higher ground after the worst tsunami in living memory swamped the island's south and east, killing more than 3,500 people.
Government officials estimate that 750,000 people have been left homeless, many sheltering in schools and temples, and say the final death toll could be much higher because hundreds of people washed out to sea have not yet been accounted for.
Giant waves crashed into the island yesterday morning after a powerful earthquake in distant Indonesia, sending a deluge of seawater into towns and villages, witnesses said. President Chandrika Kumaratunga declared a national disaster.
"A wave up to 10 ft in height hit this area and everything was swept away, including my three-wheeler taxi," said 40-year-old Piyasoma, a resident of Payagala, a town 60 km south of Colombo.
A Reuters correspondent saw a second ocean swell flood into the town, devastating the local railway station. Tracks were broken and concrete station pavilions had collapsed.
Hundreds of locals were leaving the town to head inland, while dozens of foreign tourists waited by the side of the road, trying to get a lift back to Colombo.
Local television broadcast scenes of devastation. The historic southern port city of Galle was almost completely under water after a 30-ft wave swept over the ramparts of a centuries- old Dutch fort. Residents clambered on top of sunken buses, others took refuge on roofs.
Men and women neck-deep in water clung to chunks of rubble. Some were washed away as relatives screamed, while car alarms screeched in the background. Derailed train carriages lay on their side, and flood waters stretched several hundred metres inland.
In the seaside town of Kalutara, holidaymakers staying at a luxury hotel on the seafront described a eight-foot wall of water crashing onto the coast. "We were sitting by the water when people started shouting a wave was coming in," said a visiting Briton, Mr Richard Freeman. "We left everything behind and ran inside. I just feel very sorry for the Sri Lankan people."
Many hotels along the southern coastal belt - jam-packed at the height of a bumper tourist season - were flooded. A French tourist staying in the southern town of Tangalla said his young daughter had been swept away.
Doctors evacuated pregnant women from maternity wards near Galle, as others fled houses submerged under several metres of muddy water.
Witnesses saw corpses floating in floodwaters, while thousands fled their homes in the hard-hit eastern port of Trincomalee as cars floated out to sea.
"From the police reports we have so far, 3,538 people are dead," Mr Lalith Weeratunga, secretary to Sri Lanka's Prime Minister, said. "But hundreds of people have been washed out to sea, so it might go much higher, up to 4,500. We think there are around 750,000 people displaced.
"It might take a day or two for the death toll to become clear, once bodies have been washed ashore."
The director of the National Disaster Management Centre said it was probably the worst natural disaster in Sri Lanka. Mr N.D. Hettiarachchi estimated more than one million people, or about 5 per cent of the Indian Ocean island's population, had been affected by the tsunami floods, which came just a fortnight after severe monsoon flooding damaged crops and homes.
The swells also flooded coastal areas in the Tamil Tiger rebels' north-eastern stronghold, an area still recovering from monsoon floods which forced 250,000 people from their homes. The rebels' main north-eastern naval base in Mullaittivu was badly hit, Tiger sources said.
The capital Colombo emerged largely unscathed, but slum areas close to rivers and waterways that criss-cross the city were badly flooded and listing cargo ships crashed against the sea wall in the city's port area. - (Reuters)