HONG KONG: Asia's tsunami nightmare ranks among the world's worst catastrophes, alongside the Tangshan earthquake in China and the massive floods that swamped Bangladesh 35 years ago.

While nearly 119,000 have been killed by the walls of water sent surging towards Indian Ocean coastlines by a massive undersea earthquake off Indonesia on Sunday, it is still a far cry from the numbers who perished on that fateful day in China.

At 3:48 am on July 28, 1976, the earth opened and swallowed Tangshan city in the country's Hebei province. When the dust settled more than 242,000 were officially dead, although Western experts estimated the number at 700,000.

Like the tsunami that crashed into Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and seven other nations, there was no prior warning. More than one million people were peacefully sleeping and had no time to escape.

The entire earthquake lasted just 14 to 16 seconds, felling 93 per cent of all residential buildings. While the casualties from the tsunami are not on the same scale, the number of countries affected distinguishes it as a one-of-a-kind disaster, not seen for hundreds of years.

Over the past century, Asia has borne the brunt of the world's natural disasters, accounting for most of the terrifying natural acts that the elements periodically unleash.

The calamitous Tangshan earthquake came just six years after nature came calling on Bangladesh, where a cyclone and tidal wave took the lives of up to 300,000 people.

The 20th century had its fair share of big-ticket disasters, starting in 1908 when the Sicilian city of Messina and Reggio di Calabria and Palmi in mainland Italy were slammed by an earthquake and tidal wave. Between 70,000 and 100,000 people died. China was the focus of the world's next big tragedy, when it was left reeling by an earthquake in Ningxia province that claimed an estimated 200,000 lives. -AFP