The world has pumped aid into south Asia's tsunami zone in a frantic race to save millions of survivors from dehydration and disease, and stop the death count climbing further.
As relief efforts increased today, the toll rose too, five days after a quake below the Indian Ocean sent killer waves crashing ashore.
Some 124,000 lives were confirmed lost in an arc of suffering from Africa to Indonesia's Sumatra island, which alone accounted for two thirds of the dead - and where officials said another 20,000 bodies were likely to be found. Fears rose in Indonesia that the bodies of perhaps tens of thousands of victims will never be found. Entire villages have been swept to sea.
Sri Lanka said more than 28,500 people were now confirmed dead.
The national disaster centre said the death toll in Thailand was now 4,560, at least 2,230 of them foreigners. It said 185 bodies were unidentifiable by race.
With more than 6,500 missing, most presumed dead, the final toll will be considerably higher.
Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds, who has returned from devastated Thailand, told a press conference today she believes the total death toll from the disaster in the region was rising towards 200,000.
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UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the disaster that has also displaced five million people was "an unprecedented global catastrophe and it requires an unprecedented global response."
"Not only are we going to be stretched in terms of manpower and human resources, but we are also going to be stretched financially and technically," he said. Half a billion dollars had been pledged so far.
Experts warned that even before the corpses could be counted, contagious diseases could bring more deaths in the devastated Indian Ocean areas, with children especially vulnerable.
Analysts estimated damage from the disaster at about $14 billion, excluding potential losses of business and productivity. Some are cutting growth estimates for the hardest-hit countries.
Indonesia said it would host an international tsunami summit on January 6th to hammer out aid and reconstruction needs after what looks set to be the most lethal natural disaster since China's Tangshan quake in 1976 killed at least a quarter of a million.
The tragedy is ushering in a sombre New Year's Eve around the globe. Some 6,000 foreign tourists, most of them Europeans, at popular Indian Ocean resorts, are missing and presumed dead.
A Red Cross website in Geneva to aid anxious relatives locate survivors partially crashed after being overwhelmed by 650,000 hits in the first 24 hours.
Dozens of aftershocks have unnerved the traumatised survivors after a 9.0 magnitude earthquake, the strongest in 40 years, triggered an unprecedented series of waves that crashed into coasts from Indonesia to Africa at a height of up to 33 feet.
Getting aid to the survivors is the big problem, with many roads washed out, petrol stations not operating and poor coordination among the military, aid groups and governments.
Many villages and resorts from Sri Lanka to Indonesia are now mud-covered rubble, blanketed with the stench of corpses.
Weary volunteers and aid workers were piling body after bloated body into temporary mortuaries in Khao Lak, Thailand, where nearly 2,000 foreign tourists are known to have died
People across the world opened their hearts and wallets to give millions of dollars to victims, jamming phone lines and websites and in some cases outpacing their own governments in their generosity.
The Paris Club group of creditors is to examine a debt moratorium for disaster-struck countries, a source close to the Club said. Canada announced its own moratorium.