BANDA ACEH, Jan 1: A legion of ships and planes delivered aid to millions of Asian tsunami survivors on Saturday as New Year celebrations around the world paused to mourn victims of one of the worst disasters in living memory.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for a major logistical operation to help a half-dozen countries hit by Sunday's tsunami, which by the latest count had killed more than 124,000 people.
The UN emergency relief operations coordinator said the death toll was approaching 150,000 and Sweden's foreign minister said it could go as high as 200,000.
"We mourn, we cry, and our hearts weep witnessing thousands of those killed left rigid in the streets," Indonesia President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said in a New Year's Eve address.
Rescue teams say aid has started to reach stricken areas, six days after the monster waves obliterated beach towns and swept tourists out to sea in a torrent of mud and debris.
They were racing against time with an estimated five million people in the disaster areas facing grave difficulty getting food and clean water. Health authorities warned of a second wave of deaths from contagious diseases.
Washington on Friday raised its aid tenfold to $350 million, bringing global emergency relief pledges to $1.36 billion.
Helicopters from the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier were to start ferrying relief supplies on Saturday to Sumatra, an Indonesian island the size of Florida, where aid workers have encountered unimaginable scenes of devastation.
With more than 80,000 confirmed deaths, Indonesia was the hardest hit after a 9.0 magnitude earthquake less than 150 km off the northern tip of Sumatra triggered a tsunami that ripped across the Indian Ocean to Africa.
Officials said the Indonesian figure may soar past 100,000. Sri Lanka has reported more than 28,500 deaths, while India says more than 10,000 have died.
"The true figure will probably never be known because people are burying the corpses where they find them," said Anjali Kwatra, leader of Sri Lanka's Christain Aid emergency team.
People held candles and white roses on Thailand's tsunami-hit island of Phuket at midnight on New Year's Eve, tearfully embracing as they grieved.
Party-goers and bar girls stopped their celebrations and lit incense sticks. The mournful Elton John song "Candle in the wind" echoed through the resort.
Australia led the world in a global minute of silence, parties were cancelled and trees on Paris's grand Champs Elysees were shrouded in black on Friday.
"This gives an opportunity for mums and dads to help to explain what happened to their children," a spokesman for Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore said.
European tourists who fled a dark winter for the sunshine and sands of Asia make up most of more than 2,200 foreigners killed in the disaster. More than 7,400 were missing.
Relatives and friends flying to Asia in the hope that loved ones were alive scoured gruesome mosaics of photographs of distorted faces pinned on bulletin boards alongside personal possessions that someone might recognise.
Amid a global flood of private donations, the Russian town of Beslan, which lost more than 330 people, mostly children, in a school siege, was giving $36,000, Interfax news agency said.
Hundreds of thousands of homeless now live in makeshift tent camps around the Indian Ocean. Thirteen countries were hit by the tsunami.
AIRPORT LOGJAMS: Aid trucks loaded with food, medicines and body bags rolled into tsunami-hit areas across Asia and aircraft dropped supplies to cut-off villages.
But military flights disgorging tonnes of emergency supplies at major Asian airports were creating logjams, threatening to hinder one of the world's biggest aid operations.
"The planes are going flat out," Australian army Major Grant King told Reuters at Banda Aceh airport.
But lack of fuel for trucks, impassable roads and downed bridges are hindering deliveries from airports to disaster areas.
The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carier was in the Straits of Malacca heading for Thailand. Another U.S. naval group built around the Bonhomme Richard, an amphibious assault ship, was on its way to Sri Lanka.
In Thailand - where thousands of rotting corpses, many of them of foreign tourists, were stacked in Buddhist temples - trucks were not only bringing supplies for the living, but also for the dead. One aid group alone was sending 1,000 body bags.
Aid workers were trying to dislodge corpses and dead animals from water drainpipes and wells to restore clean water supplies.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell will tour devastated areas next week.
"The need is great and not just for immediate relief but for long-term reconstruction, rehabilitation, family support, economic support that's going to be needed for these countries to get back on their feet," Powell told reporters in New York.-Reuters
