THAILAND: Thailand evacuated injured survivors of the devastating tsunami from its southern tourist beaches yesterday as officials said the national death toll was expected to top 1,000.
The official tally issued by the national disaster centre was 918, and one official there said he estimated that 20 to 30 per cent of the dead were foreigners.
"I would say the death toll would definitely exceed 1,000," Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra told reporters after visiting badly-hit Phuket, one of Asia's premier beach resorts which draws three million foreign tourists a year. "We have a long way to go in collecting bodies."
The government sent five air force C-130 transport planes to reinforce private domestic carriers airlift injured people and dead bodies to Bangkok from Phuket island and the mainland town of Krabi.
One plane was packed with empty coffins, a scene repeated around the shores of the Indian Ocean where the tsunami has killed more than 22,000 people. Charter flights started arriving from Europe to take people home.
The disaster centre said 537 people were known to have died in the worst hit of six southern provinces, Phang Nga, north of Phuket. Witnesses said small beach hotels had been swept away.
"Im in shock. It's all in God's hands," said Vithit Akevanich as he gazed at five bodies near what little was left of his 200-room Emerald Resorts and Spa on Phang Nga's Khao Lak beach where a wedding party had been staying. "I don't know what happened to them."
The toll on Khao Lak alone could reach 400, with many bodies still under flattened buildings, a senior official said.
On Phi Phi island, made famous by the Beach movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio, honeymooning California golf professional William Robins reckoned he came within "0.1 seconds" of never seeing his new bride, Amanda, ever again.
"We saw a whole bunch of people screaming and jumping off boats. We thought it was a terrorist bomb, so we jumped over a hotel fence and hid in a storage room," Robins (26) said from his hospital bed in Phuket.
"We held hands and crouched in the corner. Then we heard a rumbling explosion that didn't end," he said after being evacuated from Koh Phi Phi by the navy along with hundreds of other foreigners and Thais.
"The room exploded and a concrete wall collapsed. We were pushed through two layers of concrete and forced to let go of each other's hands," said Amanda (27), who suffered a broken pelvis.
The two were pulled underwater and suddenly shot to the surface. They were 140 metres out to sea, surrounded by debris and the smell of gasoline. A hotel employee came towards them in a boat, looking for his family.
"We were screaming. We said if we don't get on this boat, we're dead," said Robins, whose collar bone was broken and who had one ear torn almost off.
Devastated survivors described watching the three-storey high tsunami rip through streets in Phuket, tear up buildings on Koh Phi Phi and wash away hotels on the mainland.
Survivors among the 7,000 injured were cut, slashed, stabbed and battered by debris from buildings torn apart by the tsunami, generated by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the northern tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
"Our paradise turned into hell," said American tourist Moira Lee (28), who was having coffee on Phuket's Patong Beach when the tsunami hit. - (Reuters)