Sri Lanka's tsunami death toll shot up Monday as officials said the more they cleared up, the more bodies they found.

The island added another 7,275 victims to its list of the dead, taking the national toll over 38,000 and the overall toll around Indian Ocean nations to 175,458.

"We are coming across dead bodies on a daily basis as we clear the rubble," said Tilak Ranavirajah, a senior Public Security Ministry official.

Hardest-hit Indonesia has steadily raised its total, but Sri Lanka's body count had stabilized around 30,000 until yesterday.

US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz flew to the island to see the clean-up efforts in the southern port of Galle. Sri Lanka said it would begin its tsunami re-construction phase tomorrow in the obliterated town of Hambantota.

"We were not prepared at all ... To face a disaster like this," said President Chandrika Kumaratunga. "The people of this country faced it effectively, they are in a position to rebuild."

It has been 22 days since a powerful earthquake off Indonesia's Sumatra Island triggered the deadliest waves on record that hit more than a dozen countries from Asia to Africa.

Sri Lankans have now begun rebuilding tsunami-hit homes and hotels close to the shore.

"I'm worried about my family but I'm also worried about the future of my children. This is my business. How else will I protect and feed my children?" said Ranjith Premakumara, 28, rebuilding a guest house on its old foundations just meters from the beach in the southern town of Paiyagala South.

Relatives need bodies

In Thailand, Prime Minister Goran Persson of Sweden -- which lost hundreds of people -- visited a Buddhist temple turned mortuary with his Norwegian and Finnish counterparts, Kjell Magne Bondevik and Matti Vanhanen.

The temple houses hundreds of corpses from the nearby Khao Lak resort, which forensics experts are trying to identify. The identification is crucial for families left without a body to grieve over.

"I'm impressed and I'm also extremely humbled because they're doing a very difficult job here under difficult circumstances," Persson said.

The tsunami spanned 11 nations and struck a tropical band popular with tourists, making it a global disaster.

"You must all realize that this catastrophe is a catastrophe that we share," Persson said.

He said no one knew exactly how many Swedes were victims, but "We fear there may have been several hundred, in the worst case more than a thousand."

Nearly 2,000 Swedes are dead or unaccounted for.

The tsunami looks set to be the greatest national tragedy in two centuries for a country that stayed neutral in the world wars.

Tens of thousands of bodies around the region may never be recovered, worsening the trauma.

The three European politicians were greeted yesterday by angry villagers demonstrating against Thai plans to move the mortuary and forensic operation from the temple to Phuket Island, two hours drive to the south.

The need for the kind of closure the bodies represent was made clear in the Indian town of Seruthur, where Lakshmi Kolandavelu refuses to believe her husband when he says their two-year-old son, torn from her arms by the waves and missing, is dead and probably buried in a mass grave with three of his four siblings.

"We never found their bodies," she says, shaking her head.

"The sea goddess gave us five children and snatched back four," says her husband.

Tears and deeds

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said the tsunami brought tragedy but also heroism in Sumatra's Aceh Province.

"To this day, all of Indonesia is united in tears and deeds," he said. His government sought at the weekend to reassure US and other foreign troops bringing relief in Aceh -- an area suffering a long-running separatist rebellion -- that it did not plan to send them home by late March, as one official earlier said.

After talks with Wolfowitz, who visited Aceh, Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono said there was no deadline but a March 26 target for Indonesia to take over most of the aid effort.

Hundreds of troops from Australia, Singapore, Germany and other nations are helping the relief effort in Indonesia, led by some 14,000 US troops -- most of whom are docked off the coast of western Sumatra Island.

And the government was even more flexible when it came to militaries from close neighbors.

Indonesia will allow troops from neighboring Southeast Asian countries to remain in Aceh Province for as long as necessary to assist with relief efforts, the Malaysian Government said yesterday.

Senior Indonesian military officials made the assurance to army chiefs from the 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations who are holding an annual informal meeting in Kuala Lumpur, said Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak.

"For friendly ASEAN countries, there is no deadline for their involvement in humanitarian work in Aceh," Najib told a news conference. "The important thing is that there is no such imposition as to a specific timetable for our withdrawal from Aceh."

Mark Collins, head of Aceh operations for relief group AusAID, said things were slowly looking up.

"There has been a great deal of progress," he said. "Immediate needs of foods and shelter are being met."

(China Daily January 18, 2005)