MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Devastation darkens world's New Year.

Jan Egeland, the UN emergency relief coordinator, said the toll “may be approaching 150,000” as the United States increased its aid pledge tenfold to 350 million dollars.

As global pledges for tsunami relief reached the two billion mark, the UN humanitarian chief said yesterday the biggest challenge was getting aid to survivors across South Asia. Meanwhile, hungry refugees along Indonesia's tsunami-ravaged coasts begged for quicker delivery of aid yesterday, while officials across Asia insisted that bottlenecks were easing and trucks, ships and aircraft were making headway in the massive task of providing relief. Humanitarian officials said there were no reports of starvation but they were racing against time to stave off disease. Egeland warned that relief efforts were being hampered by the destruction of roads, ports and airfields.

"The biggest constraints are the logistical bottlenecks by far," he said. "In Banda Aceh, northern Sumatra, but also in Sri Lanka and the Maldives we have big logistical problems."

In Aceh province, where government officials said the toll may rise to 100,000, handwritten signs on poles and fences read: "Please help. Give us aid."

Sydney led the world in a global minute of silence before its own New Year celebration. Trees on Paris's grand Champs Elysees were shrouded in black cloth. In Indonesia, official celebrations were simply cancelled. On Thailand's tsunami-hit Phuket island, people holding candles and white roses embraced tearfully in a poignant symbol of the mood. At the stroke of midnight, party-goers stopped and lit incense sticks. The mournful Elton John song Candle in the Wind echoed through the resort.

"We are at the moment recording pledges of 2 billion dollars" ? more than all other donations promised to the United Nations in 2004 combined, Jan Egeland told reporters. "The international compassion has never ever been like this."

Japan became the largest single country donor, announcing it would spend up to 500 million dollars, topping the United States' pledge on Friday of 350 million dollars.

One of the biggest US military disaster relief missions in history kicked into high gear with the arrival of an aircraft carrier battle group to the battered shores of Sumatra. Helicopters shuttled supplies to hard-hit villages along the ravaged coasts of Indonesia that were closest to the epicentre of last Sunday's catastrophic quake and disaster. The Rome-based UN World Food Programme said two US C-130 cargo planes carrying nearly 10 tons of World Food Programme rice, biscuits and noodles flew yesterday from Jakarta to Banda Aceh. Over the next few days, two Ilyushin aircraft will fly in 700 tons of WFP high-energy biscuits to Banda Aceh region and Medan. Food is also moving by road, with a convoy of trucks carrying 18 tons of high-energy biscuits and 50 metric tons of rice, plus water and fuel, set off from Medan to Banda Aceh, the WFP said. A flotilla carrying marines and water-purifying equipment was bearing down on Sri Lanka and a former staging base for B-52 bombers in Thailand roared with the takeoffs and landings of giant cargo planes. Egeland said helicopters, a hundred boats, several hundred trucks and C-17 and C-130 cargo airplanes ? as well as air traffic controllers ? were needed to get supplies to those who survived the earthquake-triggered tsunami that killed more than 100,000 from Indonesia to Somalia. He also appealed for 10 fully equipped base camps, fuel storage, water treatment kits and communication systems. "The military and civil defence assets that many countries are providing are as valuable as cash or gold would be because it makes us move the assistance and it makes us get there in the race against the clock," he said.

The emergency relief operation, probably the biggest in history, was up against debris-clogged harbours, power outages, washed-away roads and shattered towns in a race to save millions from dehydration and disease and halt a spiralling death toll.

"The vast majority of those are in Indonesia and Aceh, which is the least assessed area because of logistical constraints, and (the toll) may therefore rise further," Egeland said. Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds had even said the toll could hit 200,000. "Boats are arriving from the islands loaded with (dead) people," she said after visiting Thailand.

Torrential rains in Sri Lanka cut off roads that had survived Sunday's colossal sea surge, keeping vital aid from hundreds of thousands in a nation that lost about 29,000 people. "Even the gods are crying," said one hotelier in the city of Batticaloa. From Buddhist monks in robes to Tamil Tiger rebels, Sri Lanka cancelled New Year celebrations and stopped to mourn.

In Khao Lak, Thailand, where more than 2,200 foreign tourists are known to have died, weary volunteers and aid workers piled body after bloated body into temporary mortuaries. "They just keep coming," said New Zealander Marko Cunningham at a makeshift mortuary in a Buddhist temple, five days after the tsunami, triggered by a magnitude 9.0 quake off Indonesia.

"Not since the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 have we been hit so hard by the devastating wrath of nature," President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said in a New Year speech. Krakatoa's volcanic eruption and the ensuing tsunami killed 36,000 people.

Sweden, Norway, Finland and Germany planned to fly flags at half mast to start 2005 in respect for the dead and missing. European tourists, who fled a dark winter for the sunshine and sands of Asia, make up most of more than 2,200 foreigners confirmed killed by the tsunami. More than 7,400 were missing.

Relatives and friends flying to Asia in the hope that loved ones were alive scoured gruesome mosaics of photographs of distorted faces pinned on bulletin boards alongside personal possessions that someone might recognize.

Amid a global flood of private donations, the Russian town of Beslan, which lost more than 330 people, mostly children, in a school siege, was giving 36,000 dollars, Interfax news agency said. Britons have given 86 million dollars, almost equalling their government's 50 million pound pledge.

Washington's announcement brought global pledges to 1.36 billion dollars. US President George W. Bush said Secretary of State Colin Powell would visit devastated areas this week. "The need is great, and not just for immediate relief but for long-term reconstruction, rehabilitation, family support, economic support that's going to be needed for these countries to get back on their feet," Powell told journalists in New York.

With paradise idylls turned into a vision of hell, hundreds of thousands of homeless now live in makeshift tent camps around a region where 13 countries were afflicted.

The horror stories were endless. "The water took my baby away," said Maitri Sayput in a Thai village. She fled with her three daughters from the tsunami that overtook her, tearing her 7-year-old and eldest daughters away before finally dumping her and her 12-year-old inland.

The catastrophe has left millions without even the basics to survive. Aid workers strained to dislodge corpses and dead animals from drainpipes and wells in an attempt to restore clean water supplies. Aid groups fear that without clean water, the spread of disease could double the death toll.

As trucks laden with food, medicines and body bags rolled across Asia, and aircraft dropped supplies to cut-off villages, some airports in the region were barely coping. Giant transport planes from Australia and Singapore landed at Banda Aceh and disgorged emergency supplies, but that was the easy part. Sending help from regional centres to people cut off in coastal lands was a logistical nightmare, as troops, aid groups and governments struggled to coordinate their efforts.

"We are going to need major logistical support to airplanes, helicopters and air controllers to assist us (to) move the produce and the goods as quickly as possible so that we don't have bottlenecks," UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said.

Experts warned that disease could kill many more, especially children. Diarrhoea, cholera and malaria are the main dangers.(BAH)