"The whole area is still chaotic ... boats are arriving from the islands loaded with (dead) people," Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds said after visiting Thailand. "In the whole area the death toll is beginning to rise towards 200,000."
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 a devastating tsunami water surge triggered by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off Indonesia.
In Indonesia's Aceh province where government officials said the toll may rise to 100,000, the stench of death filled the air, troops guarded fuel stations and hand-written signs on poles and fences read: "Please help. Give us aid."
Rice sacks were stacked along the walls of a house guarded by a dozen armed soldiers in the city of Banda Aceh.
"That's their friends and family. Indonesia is like that, always unfair," said Dede Kurniawan, 25, pointing to those being given rations after he was turned away.
"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, referring to a volcanic eruption and tsunami that killed 36,000 people. "We mourn, we cry, and our hearts weep witnessing thousands of those killed left rigid in the streets."
NEW YEAR MOURNING: Australia led the world in a global minute of silence, New Year parties were cancelled and trees on Paris's grand Champs Elysees were shrouded in black.
Governments urged revellers to rein in excesses and spare thoughts for victims and money for survivors.
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, made up most of more than 2,200 foreign tourists killed by the tsunami. Nearly 7,000 were missing. Relatives and friends flying to Asia from Europe in the hope that loved ones lay injured in hospital faced the grim reality they might be among bloated bodies in refrigerated containers. They scoured gruesome mosaics of photographs of distorted faces pinned on bulletin boards alongside small possessions - a ring or a watch - which someone might recognise.
With the paradise idyll 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 humanitarian catastrophe caused by the tsunami that left millions without even the basics to survive, was unprecedented and stretched the world's ability to respond, the UN said.
Aid workers strained to dislodge corpses and dead animals from water drainpipes and wells in an attempt to restore clean water supplies. Aid groups fear that without clean water supplies the spread of disease could double the death toll.
Aid started to get through to stricken areas, but not always to the right people, amid poor co-ordination and destruction.
Some airports were struggling to cope. "We are already witnessing a logjam at key airfields," Australian Defence Minister Robert Hill said.
Getting aid to survivors was also hampered by poor co-ordination among the military, aid groups and governments.
LOGISTICAL NIGHTMARE: Sending help from regional centres to people cut off in coastal lands was a logistical nightmare. Experts warned disease could kill many more, with children most at risk. Diarrhoea, cholera and malaria are key dangers.
"People need to be treated now so they don't get deep infections," said Peter Sharwood, an Australian surgeon trying to get a ride into Banda Aceh. "Those who had life-threatening injuries to start with have probably already died."
Indonesia said it would host an international summit on January 6 to hammer out aid and reconstruction needs after what looks set to be the most lethal natural disaster since China's Tangshan quake in 1976 killed at least a quarter of a million.
Sri Lanka, further from the quake's epicentre but savagely hit, raised its death toll to more than 28,500. "The true figure will probably never be known because people are burying the corpses where they find them," said Anjali Kwatra, of the island's Christian Aid emergency assessment team.
US President George W. Bush, attacked for a slow reaction and a $35 million aid pledge, said Secretary of State Colin Powell would visit the region on Sunday to assess needs.
People across the world opened their hearts and wallets to give millions of dollars to victims.