UN Secretary General Kofi Annan flew over the tsunami-ravaged landscape of Indonesia's Aceh province yesterday and asked: "Where are the people?"
US Secretary of State Mr Colin Powell also expressed shock at the scale of the disaster as he toured another devastated Indian Ocean country, Sri Lanka.
As aid workers strove to reach hundreds of thousands of people thought to be stranded in isolated parts of Indonesia's Sumatra island, Jakarta added more than 7,000 deaths to its tsunami toll. It now stands at 101,318, out of a total of more than 153,000 for the 13 nations affected.
"I have never seen such utter destruction, mile after mile. You wonder, where are the people?" said Mr Annan after a helicopter tour over Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra with World Bank chief Mr James Wolfensohn.
A day after a crisis aid summit in Jakarta, Mr Powell toured Sri Lanka's south, where the giant waves that crashed ashore on December 26th killed more than 30,000 and reduced coastal towns to piles of rubble.
"The destruction that we saw was significant," he said as he wrapped up his lightning visit. "It was more than just walls that have been knocked down or buildings that have been crushed, but lives that were crushed and snuffed out."
The UN warned that the fate of tens of thousands was unknown and that the death toll could climb sharply if survivors scrambling for food and clean water succumbed to dysentery and cholera. Up to a million people may have lived in Aceh's isolated coastal areas before they were struck by the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and its killer waves, UN emergency relief co-ordinator Mr Jan Egeland said.
"I do not think we are even close to having any figures as to how many people have died, how many are missing, how many have been severely affected," he said.
Mr Anan's helicopter took him over the town of Meulaboh on Sumatra's west coast, just 150 km from the epicentre of the undersea earthquake that unleashed the tsunami.
The UN estimates one third of Meulaboh's 120,000 people were killed when the giant waves ripped through. The area south of the city remains a black hole.
"We have no information at all below Meulaboh. It is a big worry," said Mr Michael Elmquist, UN relief chief in the provincial capital Banda Aceh, adding that satellite photographs showed an "area that used to be land is now sea".
"The only way to describe some of the villages is extinct," said US helicopter pilot Mr Scott Cohick after an airdrop to the area. "We drop off food where we are told and we save some to drop off to stragglers." - (Reuters)
Opinion, comment and analysis:
Tom Arnold of Concern on the immediate aid priority, page 15; Breda O'Brien on keeping faith in the face of disaster, and Martin Mansergh on re-ordering the world's priorities, page 16.