Thousands of Europeans missing after catastrophe: 1,000 Swedes unaccounted for
PARIS, Dec 29: Thousands of European tourists in Asian beach resorts were listed dead or missing on Wednesday in the wake of Sunday's tsunami calamityt.
More than 5,000 people - at least half of them Western holidaymakers - are missing and 1,829 are confirmed dead after the giant waves ripped through beach resorts in south western Thailand, the authorities said.
More than 100 Europeans have so far been confirmed dead, and around 3,000 were reported missing, although estimates varied. With more than 1,000 Swedish tourists in Thailand still unaccounted for, Sweden looked likely to be the Western country hardest-hit by the catastrophe.
"The catastrophe is probably the worst of our time and will impact everyday Swedish life for a long time to come," Prime Minister Goeran Persson said at a news conference on Wednesday.
Calling the tidal waves "a huge tragedy" Mr Persson said the number of Swedish victims was "very high", but offered no figures beyond the six Swedish fatalities which had been positively identified since Tuesday.
"What we need now is national unity," Persson said. Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds spoke of a "national trauma" for her country. In Phuket, Thailand, where she touched down on Wednesday, Laila Freivalds said more than 1,000 Swedes were still missing.
"Many of them, I fear, we will not find," she was quoted as saying by the TT news agency. Freivalds compared the trauma for Swedes with the 1994 sinking of the Estonia car ferry, Europe's worst post-war maritime disaster, which occurred during a crossing from Tallinn to Stockholm and was survived by only 137 of the 989 on board.
"You won't find many people in Sweden who don't have some personal link to this tragedy," Freivalds said. When the waves struck, some 20,000 to 30,000 Swedes were believed to be holidaying in the disaster areas, of whom up to 10,000 could have been travelling independently of any tour operator, officials said.
Some 80,000 Swedes visited Phuket in 2003. The Thai authorities said that Western tourists had borne the brunt of the tidal wave disaster, especially northern Europeans.
"For the tourists the hardest-hit group was northern Europe, especially Scandinavia," Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra told reporters. Norway was still without news of 446 of its citizens in Thailand, the government said Wednesday.
A further 930 Norwegians were believed to have been in the region at the time of the disaster, but their exact whereabouts were not known, Foreign Minister Jan Petersen told a news conference.
The official casualty toll was still 13 Norwegians dead, and between 20 and 40 injured. Norway was to dispatch a second aircraft equipped with medical facilities on Thursday to Thailand after a first such plane took off Wednesday.
REPATRIATION: As families across Scandinavia endured the painful wait for news from their loved ones, the Swedish government announced efforts to repatriate its citizens from Thailand.
"The most important thing is now to get all Swedes home," Freivalds said. This included those in hospital. "They are clearly well taken care of, but we are putting strain on the health services here in Thailand which does not have enough resources for its own population," she said.
Swedish tour operator Fritidsresor said Wednesday that simply evacuating people from Phuket was "no longer enough". "There is a crying need for ambulance transport for people with open wounds and those who are in a state of shock," Managing Director Johan Lundgren said.
Fritidsresor spokeswoman Lottie Knutson said the Thai authorities sent many tourists from evacuated areas straight to Phuket airport, although they were in urgent need of medical attention.
"There are thousands of tourists with open wounds, bleeding and in a state of shock at the airport," she said. "There are no doctors, no air conditioning. People are lying there in the heat and dying," she said. -AFP
