Via Reuters: Tsunami Death Toll Jumps Over 120,000

The mercilessness of Asia’s tsunami grew clearer on Thursday as worst-hit Indonesia sharply raised its death toll, taking the number of fatalities around the whole Indian Ocean region above 120,000.

Health Ministry sources told Reuters just under 80,000 had died in Indonesia’s northern Aceh province that was close to the undersea quake, some 28,000 more than previously announced. Two sources said the toll would be officially announced soon.

Aceh, already suffering a prolonged conflict, has emerged as the “ground zero” of Sunday’s great earthquake just off its coast. It triggered monstrous waves all the way to Africa that killed thousands more in India, Thailand and elsewhere.

Sri Lanka, severely afflicted, raised its toll on Thursday by just under 3,000 people to 27,268.

Millions of people on Indian Ocean shores scrambled for food and clean water as disease, thirst, hunger and panic threatened survivors of the world’s most lethal natural disaster since a cyclone in Bangladesh killed 138,000 people in 1991.

Incomprehensible.

And that last paragraph answers a questions I had from earlier in terms of natural disasters of similar scale.