BANDA ACEH, Indonesia, Jan 23 (AFP) - Four weeks after one of the world's worst ever natural disasters, tsunami-ravaged Asian countries are still reeling from its massive toll on humanity and a level of destruction that will take many years and billions of dollars to repair.
Thousands of bodies are still being pulled from the rubble in Indonesia, hundreds of foreign tourists lie unidentified in mass graves in Thailand, while Sri Lanka and India grapple with the mammoth task of rebuilding their shattered coastal communities.
With the death toll from the December 26 earthquake off Indonesia's Sumatra island and the tsunamis it unleashed on Indian Ocean coastlines topping 220,000, the catastrophe now ranks as the third-worst natural disaster in the past 100 years. It is the deadliest tsunami ever.
In response the United Nations is coordinating the largest humanitarian relief operation the world has seen, but the tragedy is unremitting.
In the worst-hit countries relief workers are still scrambling to find and bury the dead, get aid to the homeless and launch rebuilding projects.
Reconstruction is a far-off prospect in Indonesia's Aceh province, where the earthquake and tsunamis levelled Banda Aceh, Meulaboh and the rest of its west coast, killing more than 166,000.
Each sunrise in the province sheds light on new horrors, with last week about 3,500 cadavers pulled daily from beneath tonnes of debris. So many that they have stopped officially counting.
"It will take another four weeks to recover all the bodies," Haniff Asmara, the secretary of Aceh's disaster control taskforce, said Wednesday.
Yet the biggest problem facing disaster zones is not the dead, but the living.
Tens of thousands of survivors remain stranded in Aceh as a massive multinational aid effort battles to get food, medicine and shelter to cut-off communities.
Temporary camps in the province teem with hundreds of thousands of displaced people who have no homes, jobs or family to return to.
In Sri Lanka -- the second worst-hit country with about 31,000 killed -- more than 400,000 people are still being sheltered in public buildings, temples and churches along the island's coast, with plans to move them into tent villages. Weary and traumatised, they bear psychological as well as physical scars.
Warnings from the UN and World Health Organisation that disease outbreaks could double the disaster toll have so far proved unfounded.
Even so, huge problems remain.
In Sri Lanka Tamil Tiger rebels and the government have sparred over the distribution of aid, while in war-torn Aceh humanitarian organisations are battling more than the tsunami's devastation.
Their work is being hampered by flooding, a civil conflict between separatist guerrillas and government troops, rumours of terrorist attacks and restrictions on their operations imposed by the Indonesian military.
Indonesia initially urged foreign troops helping the relief effort in the province to quit by March 26 but has since said they can stay as long as their presence is scaled own.
The US has 24 naval vessels and 15,000 troops in the Indian Ocean region, using helicopters and planes to airdrop aid to stricken communities in Aceh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives.
Japan, India, Australia, Spain and France are among countries who also sent troops to help in relief efforts.
With 56 nations reporting casualties the Asian calamity was a truly global disaster.
In the immediate aftermath UN chief Kofi Annan declared it "an unprecedented global catastrophe and it requires an unprecedented global response".
And so there has been, with up to 10 billion dollars pledged worldwide by governments, companies and ordinary individuals in a remarkable outpouring of sympathy.
After an initial "beauty contest" in which wealthy nations fell over themselves to trump each other's donation pledges, UN secretary general used an emergency summit in Jakarta to call their bluff, demanding a billion dollars in cash up front.
He secured most of it and took the helm of the world's largest ever humanitarian relief operation, warning that it would be a long-haul to recovery.
Just how long, and how expensive, is what affected countries have now started to count.
Sri Lanka this week launched a 3.5 billion dollar "action plan" to restore the three-quarters of its shoreline shattered by the tsunami, while the International Monetary Fund warned the island nation's losses were likely to be worse than expected, with economic growth, the balance of payments and inflation all likely to suffer.
Already heavily aid-dependant Indonesia estimates four billion dollars is needed to rebuild Aceh in the next five years.
The Maldives put its overall damage bill at 4.8 billion dollars, calling on donors for 1.5 billion dollars in cash to rebuild the tourist paradise which President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom said had been pushed back 20 years.
India, which refused foreign aid in favour of a go-it-alone policy for disaster relief, has earmarked 27 billion rupees (600 million dollars) for reconstruction on top of five billion rupees sanctioned for relief and rescue, while more money could be allocated for the far-flung Andaman and Nicobar Islands, close to the epicentre of the underwater earthquake.
Relatively prosperous Thailand's main damage was to key industries such as shrimp farming, which suffered an estimated 500 million dollar loss, and tourism, which is set to lose more than 250 million dollars a month.
Popular tourist resort, Phuket island, was badly hit but work to rebuild damaged hotels and infrastructure is already underway. Previously developed Phi Phi island and Khao Lak in Phnag Nga province, however, will be allowed only limited redevelopment after both were obliterated by the tsunami.
Cartographers in India and Sri Lanka meanwhile are preparing to redraw maps after the quake -- the fourth biggest in a century registering 9.0 on the Richter scale -- shifted whole islands and reshaped coastal landscapes.
About 10 to 20 meters (yards) of beach was lost at the southern Sri Lankan port district of Galle while at Arugam Bay in the east the problem was far more acute with the sea coming in about 150 meters.
The capital of India's Andaman Islands, Port Blair, has shifted over a metre (yard) and Indian surveyor-general, Prithvish Nag, said the movements would affect ship and aircraft operations so required new mapping.
Geloogists in Thailand fear a dormant offshore fault-line may have been reactivated near Ranong province.
Scientists around the region will also be assessing changes to the seabed caused by the submarine tectonic rupture, while environmentalists have begun rescue operations to save many coral reefs buffeted by the giant waves or left covered in debris.
But with thousands of people still missing, many of whom may never be found, the human cost remains incalculable.
In Phuket, where hundreds, perhaps thousands, of foreign tourists remain unidentified or lost at sea, Michaela Wagner of Vienna hands out pictures of her 11-year-old cousin David Baumgartner. The boy's family refuses to give up searching for him.
"We don't know anything, we just know we don't want to leave here without him," Wagner said.
01/23/2005 13:19 GMT - AFP