Three days after the powerful earthquake-tsunamis that struck some South and Southeast Asian countries on Sunday, the latest reports from the affected nations put the death toll at more than 63,000.  

The death toll from Sunday's powerful earthquake and tsunami has reached 27,174 in Indonesia, the Health Ministry said late Tuesday.

In a statement, the ministry said the figure came in after the dead were counted in Banda Aceh and the western areas of Meulaboh and Aceh Jaya.

According to the statement, nearly all the deaths were in the country's province of Aceh at the tip of Sumatra, which was struck by tidal waves triggered by a magnitude-8.7 earthquake.

The death toll in Sri Lanka has risen to 21,715 three days after a tsunami battered the island.

The tsunami resulted from the earthquake in the Indian Ocean on Sunday, which sent high waves crashing onto Sri Lanka's eastern and southern shores.

Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga called for national unity on Tuesday to rebuild the country devastated by the tsunamis that killed thousands of people in the nation.

"I truly believe that this is the time for us to shed all our differences and unite to meet the challenge of rebuilding our country," Kumaratunga said in a televised address.

Besides killing people, the tsunami also hit the local tourism industry really hard.

In Trincomalee, one of Sri Lanka's most attractive tourist spots with its beautiful beach and hospitable residents, a lot of hotels had been destroyed.

In the Nilaveli region of Trincomalee, the 30-year-old Nilaveli Beach Hotel was swept away. All the 86 guest rooms were inundated on Sunday and nearly half of the villa-style buildings collapsed.

In an interview with Xinhua, a security guard of the hotel asked the reporter to take a photo for him in front of the security quarters where he has been working for years as he is leaving the place and do not know when he could return. And broken beds, chairs, tables and soaked mattresses were scattered around the yard of the once beautiful hotel.

Thailand's death toll in Sunday's tsunami has increased to 1,500 with more and more corpses found by rescue teams, the state-run Thai News Agency reported on Tuesday night.

"A brief government announcement at 16:00 this afternoon put the number of dead at 1,516, with 8,432 more people injured," said the report.

The number is expected to further rise with search-and-rescue operations still going on in the kingdom's six southwestern provinces.

Rescue workers said there were still some 1,000 bodies in the worst hit Phnagnga Province that they were not able to reach.

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra told reporters earlier that he expected the death toll to exceed 2,000.

According to reports reaching Beijing Tuesday from Thailand's tsunami-stricken tourist resort of Phuket Island, most Chinese visitors there have returned home.

The famous island had been badly hit with at least a dozen hotels on the Patong beachfront and countless shops and stores severely damaged. Telecommunications in Phuket was still partly paralyzed Tuesday with most mobile phone calls failing to dial out.

India reported on late Tuesday that the nation's mounting human toll has exceeded 12,400 and the number includes an estimated 7,000 confirmed or presumed dead on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal.

By official estimates, the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry, a union territory in the south of India, accounted for some 4,500 of the deaths.

Hundreds of people, mainly fishermen and children, are missing in Tamil Nadu. Andhra Pradesh State, located in southeastern India, has suffered 90 casualties and the southern Indian state of Kerala,160. With bodies still being washed ashore, the toll is expected to rise further.

While grieving families in wrecked coastal towns and resorts buried their loved ones, others, including many foreign tourists, searched for friends and relatives still missing.

"Why did you do this to us, God?" wailed an old woman in a devastated fishing village in Tamil Nadu State. "What did we do to upset you? This is worse than death."

The Maldives, which is among the countries hit by the disaster, reported 55 deaths. The elections commission announced Tuesday to postpone the nation's parliamentary elections scheduled for Friday by three weeks because of the devastating tidal waves.

In Myanmar, UNICEF said in a statement Tuesday that it has been informed by reliable sources that there are at least 90 deaths due to tsunamis.

UNICEF anticipates that emergency funding may be needed to provide essential health, clean water and sanitation assistance in affected areas.

Meanwhile, Myanmar government spokesman Brigadier-General Aung Thein said on Tuesday that 36 people were killed, 14 missing and 45 injured as of Tuesday afternoon.

Aung Thein, who is deputy information minister, disclosed at a press conference in the country's capital that 138 buildings were destroyed in some parts of the country's six divisions and states -- Tanintharyi, Yangon, Bago, Ayeyawaddy, Rakhine and Shan (South), and 778 people were left homeless.

The tsunami killed people as far away as in East African countries, including Kenya, the Seychelles, Somalia and Tanzania.

The United Nations launched what it called an unprecedented relief effort to assist nations hit by the tsunami.

In a further threat to the region, communicable disease could kill as many people as those killed by the wall of water, a top World Health Organization official said.

According to China's CCTV, the latest counted death toll from Sunday's tsunami across southern Asia has approached 68,000. Experts say the number is expected to rise as more bodies are being washed ashore hour by hour.

In Sri Lanka, waves flung a train off its tracks, killing around 800 people. The incident puts the country's toll at about 22,000. In Indonesia, the death toll has climbed to over 32,000. In India, the estimate deaths are more than 12,000. And in Thailand, more than 1,500 people died. Other hundreds of deaths are in Malaysia, the Maldives, Myanmar, Bangladesh and some northern African countries. 

(Xinhua News Agency, CCTV.com December 29, 2004)