Confirmed deaths and warnings that disease could multiply the horror of Asia's tsunami catastrophe took estimates of the final toll to over 100,000 as the world's biggest ever relief operation stutters into life against enormous odds.

In Indonesia alone, vice president Yusuf Kalla estimated up to 40,000 could be dead on the devastated island of Sumatra which bore the brunt of Sunday's earthquake and the tidal waves it triggered to create the world's worst natural disaster in recent history.

By the hour the confirmed tolls ticked up relentlessly in the hardest hit countries, including Sri Lanka, India and Thailand, where the stench of death and mass burials combined with traumatic grief and looting to create an apocalyptic vision for overwhelmed relief workers.

With nearly 59,000 confirmed dead, rotting corpses, smashed sewers and contaminated water combined with a lack of food and shelter, along with mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue fever and malaria, could wipe out weakened survivors in their tens of thousands, UN and other experts warned.

"The immediate terror associated with the tsunamis and the earthquake itself may be dwarfed by the longer term suffering of the affected communities," said David Nabarro, the top official at the World Health Organization dealing with humanitarian crises.

"There is a chance that we could have at least as many dying from communicable diseases as we had dying from the tsunami," he added as the horrors from the waves of death which engulfed wealthy tourists and the poor alike continued to be revealed on coastlines around the region.

Food and medicine was already desperately short in many stricken areas and Guido Bertolaso, an Italian civil emergency chief who is coordinating European Union rescue operations, warned the overall death toll could surpass 100,000.

The task of preventing this second wave of suffering is daunting and unprecedented.

UN disaster relief coordinator Jan Egeland said relief operations would be the biggest in history, urging the immediate burial of human victims and the disposal of dead animals before they infect drinking water.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan joined the chorus of warnings that the death toll could rise by tens of thousands, adding that the victims were "looking to the international community to respond and respond generously".

"Down the line, I think we are going to need billions. Billions of dollars," he said.

While the aid organizations made their plans and governments around the world pledged cash and dispatched ships and aircraft to help, the millions of bereaved and homeless faced a seemingly hopeless task of rebuilding shattered lives amidst utter chaos.

Half of the confirmed dead - 30,057 - were in the Indonesian province of Aceh, close to the epicenter of the biggest earthquake in 40 years which sparked the tsunami waves that devastated coastal villages and resorts across the Indian Ocean.

In Sri Lanka 17,800 people died, in India more than 9,000, and many thousands are still missing.

With the majority of the confirmed dead in countries poorly equipped to cope with such a tragedy, aid agencies were struggling to get operations off the ground.

But the tragedy struck not only the poor eking out a living on Asia's coasts, but the rich holidaying on tropical islands once considered paradise and now doomed to be known as paradise lost.

Most of Thailand's 1,574 dead were tourists, officials said, mostly from Western nations.

Thousands of European and American tourists remained unaccounted for and the toll rose with virtually every report from the 10 countries afflicted from Malaysia to Somalia on the African coast.

A total of 101 Europeans were reported dead and another 3,390 were missing.

Tourists from several Asian countries were also missing.

Carol Bellamy, executive director of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), said children made up a large proportion of the dead.

"Children can run, but they are less able to hold on, to withstand flooding waters," Bellamy said.

There were stories of miraculous escapes, such as that of a 13-year-old girl who survived after spending two days clinging to a wooden door in the Indian Ocean after being swept off a remote island.

Meghna Rajshekhar disappeared along with 77 other people when the giant tsunami struck an Indian air force base by the sea on Car Nicobar island.

Locals found her walking in a daze along the beach on Tuesday after she had drifted in stormy seas for two days, Rear Admiral Rakesh Kala told reporters.

But there were far more stories of unspeakable horror, with mass burials underway everywhere with little formality but accompanied by huge outpourings of grief from people who had lost their entire families, homes and livelihoods.

In Banda Aceh, capital of Indonesia's Aceh province on Sumatra island, the stench of death hung over the town as survivors struggled to dig graves in tropical heat.

The first ship dispatched to a stretch of obliterated coastline on Sumatra arrived Wednesday to deliver emergency aid to the area which had been completely isolated for days.

An Indonesian navy spokesman said the Indonesian warship Sibolga had docked at Meulaboh, a port town of 40,000 people that was almost completely leveled by crashing tides when it took the full force of the quake close to its shores.

Aid agencies on the ground say they are struggling to reach Meulaboh because of blocked roads, collapsed bridges and a lack of fuel and transport in the province.

After returning from a reconnaissance flight over the town, less than 150 kilometers from the epicenter, vice president Yusuf Kalla said there appeared to be no sign of life.

Elsewhere, hundreds of rescue ships, helicopters and planes were mobilized on relief missions.

The US military said it had diverted an aircraft carrier, other ships, at least 20 aircraft and thousands of sailors and marines to affected Asian countries.

© 2004 Agence France-Presse