UNITED NATIONS, Jan 15: Senior United Nations officials said on Friday relief operations in the tsunami-affected countries were going reasonably well, terming reports of child exploitation exaggerated and stressing the need for an early warning system to save thousands of lives in future.

At a press conference, the head of the UN children's agency (Unicef) said there were probably fewer orphans than originally thought in the tsunami-hit areas, where efforts had to be directed toward uniting children with family members.

Carol Bellamy, Unicef's executive director, said an agency in Sri Lanka, which works with UNICEF, had compiled a preliminary data on some 3,000 children. Of this group, 836 had lost both parents in the tragedy, but had an extended family, and 38 seemed to be totally without parents.

Among the more than 160,000 people killed in the Dec 26 catastrophe, almost half were children, according to Jan Egeland, the UN's emergency relief coordinator. United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has welcomed the response to his call for the creation of a global early warning system.