Sunday's tsunami joins history's deadliest natural disasters

The tsunami triggered by Sunday's Indonesian undersea earthquake, which killed at least 80,000 people, ranks among the eight most lethal natural disasters in the last 100 years.

The deadliest events on record include a 1970 Bangladesh cyclone that claimed nearly 300,000 lives and a 1976 Chinese earthquake centered on Tangshan where the official toll was 242,000, though Western estimates reached 700,000. Two separate Chinese earthquakes in 1920 and 1927 each killed up to 200,000 people.

Other catastrophic events include a 1923 Japanese earthquake and resulting fires that killed 143,000 in Yokohama, a 1991 Bangladesh cyclone and floods that left more than 139,000 dead, and a 1908 earthquake and tidal wave that devastated Messina and parts of mainland Italy, killing up to 100,000.

Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this AFP wire report, first published in December 2004, in its own words.