A wall of water up to 30 feet high triggered by the 8.9 magnitude earthquake swept into Indonesia, over the coasts of Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Maldives and India, and across southern Thai tourist islands swallowing entire seaside towns and villages.

In Indonesia at least 4,185 people were killed as the country took the full force of the quake, the world's fifth largest since 1900 and biggest since 1964.

Sri Lanka was also hard hit with 3,225 people confirmed dead, 1,600 injured and many more missing, the military and Tamil Tiger rebels said.

At least 2,447 people were killed in southern India, with the chief minister of Tamil Nadu announcing 1,567 deaths in her state alone and at least 300 people killed on the country's Andaman islands, where 700 are missing.

In southern Thailand at least 310 people were killed, including foreign tourists at famous seaside resorts, and 5,000 injured, officials said.

In Malaysia 42 people, including many elderly and children, were killed, officials said.

A British tourist and 14 other people died in the low-lying Maldives, officials and residents said.

In Bangladesh a father and a child were killed after a tourist boat capsized from large waves, local officials said.

INDONESIA WORST HIT
At least 4,185 people were killed in Indonesia where tsunami waves washed people out to sea and tore children from their parents' arms, officials said.

Most of the dead were on northern Sumatra, the island nearest the epicentre of one of the largest seismic events for decades, prompting President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to declare it a national disaster.

Communications were down in several coastal towns nearest to the undersea quake off the western coast of the island's Aceh Province, where 3,000 dead bodies were found, raising fears of widespread and as yet unreported damage.

Indonesian authorities said they expected the death toll to rise as villagers scoured the coast for others missing since waves measuring up to 10 metres (33 feet) swept along northern Aceh Province.

Aceh, a region currently closed off to foreign media and aid agencies due to a long-running separatist conflict, saw unconfirmed reports of casualties, with buildings including a mosque and a hotel collapsing. Metro TV said more than 30,000 had been left homeless in the province.

A reporter from the private El Shinta radio said the earthquake caused substantial damage in the provincial capital Banda Aceh, including the partial collapse of Kuala Tripa hotel and several shops as well as cracks on roads.

"According to villagers whom I talked to, the waves were up to 10 metres in height," Mustofa Gelanggang, head of Aceh's Bireuen district told AFP.

"The wave swept all settlements on the coast, and most houses on stilts and made of wood were either swept away or destroyed. Some areas were under between two and three metres of water for about two hours," he said.

Jakarta's Meteorology and Geophysics Office said the quake measured 6.8 on the Richter scale and was centred beneath the Indian Ocean some 149 kilometres (93 miles) south of Meulaboh. The initial shock was followed by after tremors.

But the US Geological Survey said it measured 8.9 on the Richter scale.

"So far, we have registered about 10 aftershocks following the initial earthquake at 7:58am. But their magnitude were only between 2.0 to 3.0 on the Richter scale," Indonesian seismologist Budi Waluyo told AFP.

Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 18,000 islands, lies on the collision point of three continental plates and is prone to frequent earthquakes and volcano eruptions.

SRI LANKA SUFFERS HUGE TOLL
The Sri Lankan government declared a state of disaster after huge waves, the worst in living memory, battered the country's eastern and southern coastlines, swamping entire villages.

Sri Lanka's President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who was in London, cut short her holiday and was on her way back home, a spokesman for her office said, adding she also appealed for international help.

The rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) said they recovered the bodies of at least 800 people killed in the disaster in the coastal region of Wanni where they have their main military bases.

Outside the rebel-held regions, the military reported 2,425 people dead. Government military spokesman Daya Ratnayake said 43 victims were military personnel.

A police official in the southern district of Matara, 160 kilometres (100 miles) south of Colombo, said most of the victims were children and elderly people.

At least 300 prisoners in Matara fled from a high-security jail as inmates took advantage of the disaster, police said.

"We are getting police reports from the main towns, but there are still areas where rescue workers have not been able to reach," the prime minister's top aide Lalith Weeratunga said.

A police spokesman said some 1 million people, or 5 percent of the population, were displaced.

The worst hit areas appear to be the tourist regions in the south and east where beach hotels were inundated or swept away.

MORE THAN 2,447 DEAD IN INDIA
President A P J Abdul Kalam appealed for calm yesterday after at least 2,447 people died in India's south coast, where beaches turned into virtual open-air mortuaries, with bodies of people caught in the tidal wave being washed ashore.

"I request the people to remain calm and cooperate with relief teams so that relief reaches the needy," said Kalam, whose southern Indian home-state of Tamil Nadu suffered the worst with at least 1,567 dead.

He described the events as a "national tragedy" and said he was closely following the relief work.

At least 300 people died and 700 were missing in the Andaman Islands, the local police chief said.

"Three hundred were confirmed dead in the union territory, mostly in the worst-hit Char Nicobar," Inspector General of Police Samsher Deol said.

"The situation is very grim," Deol said. "The death toll will go up at least to 1,000."

"I was shocked to see innumerable fishing boats flying on shoulders of waves, going back and forth into the sea, as if made of paper," said P Ramanamurthy, 40, who lives in Andra Pradesh's Kakinada Town. "I had never imagined anything like this could happen."

CHILDREN TORN FROM PARENTS' ARMS IN THAILAND
At least 310 people including Some 168 Western and Asian tourists were killed and scores missing in southern Thailand.

Many of the deaths occurred in the idyllic tourist islands of Phuket and Phi Phi. "As of now Phuket has 117 dead," the island's governor Udomsak Aswarangkul told iTV, adding to official casualty figures of 193 for the rest of the nation.

He said the popular resort island was also reporting 214 people missing, including 162 foreign tourists. Other officials said some 5,000 were injured.

The nation's top beach attractions were among the worst-hit when waves triggered by the underwater quake swept scores of people out to sea, drowned snorkellers, sank boats and shattered buildings along the coast.

Ten-metre-high (33 feet) waves crashed down onto beaches and crushed holiday bungalows, with the first hitting just before 10:00am (0300 GMT).

Thai Premier Thaksin Shinawatra, who flew to Phuket, told reporters he was "shocked and sorry" at the devastation. "We have never had such a disaster before, thus we were a bit unprepared," he said.

He said that with casualty figures still uncertain, he would stay overnight in Phuket to direct the rescue.

In addition to the 117 confirmed dead in Phuket, the interior ministry said 88 died in the mainland province of Phang Nga next to Phuket; 57 in Ranong, the coastal province bordering Myanmar; 36 in Krabi province; seven in Satun province; and five in Trang province.

The death toll was likely to rise with several officials reporting over Thai radio and television that beachgoers and villagers had gone missing.

A senior police official said up to 50 people were killed on Phi Phi 40 kilometres (25 miles) off the western Andaman coast, where huts on the exposed beach were swept away.

"It was an utter disaster. People were hanging onto trees, children were lost out of the arms of their mothers, and then the mothers were just swept away," said Briton Jack Allen in Phuket.

HUNDREDS LEFT HOMELESS IN MALAYSIA
Police and rescue workers in Malaysia said 42 people were killed. More than 1,000 homes across numerous fishing villages were destroyed as waves roared into the coastline, leaving hundreds of families homeless, disaster officials said.

"This is a disaster that our country has never faced before in history," Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak.

Penang Traffic Police Chief Wan Abdullah told AFP that 32 bodies had been found on the island, adding, "We expect to recover more bodies."

In Penang, along the Tanjung Tokong road where land reclamation work was taking place, two five-metre-long (15 feet) fishing boats were flung about 13 metres by the huge wave onto a road.

A police spokesman said a four-to-six-metre high wave destroyed about 1,000 houses and affected about 5,000 people, it said.

NATIONAL DISASTER IN MALDIVES
The Indian Ocean tourist paradise of the Maldives was hit by tidal waves, inundating low-lying islands, but there were no immediate reports of casualties, officials said.

President Mamoon Abdul Gayoom was to declare a national disaster in the archipelago whose coral atolls are a magnet for tourists from around the world, said chief government spokesman Ahmed Shaheed.

"The damage is considerable," Shaheed said. "The island is only about three feet (one metre) above the sea level and a wave of water four feet high swept over us."

The international airport was unusable, he said. "It is a very bad situation. It is terrible."

Residents of the Maldivian capital, Male, contacted by telephone, said most of the capital was flooded.