Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said Thursday that most of the
6,000 people reported missing after the earthquake-powered tsunamis hit the
country on Sunday are feared dead.
"There are many people listed as missing and we think that 80 percent of them
are feared dead," he told reporters as rescue workers scrambled to find more
survivors and bury the dead.
"Twenty percent may have lost contact," said Thaksin whose country's southern
tourist resorts were heavily hit by tidal wavesthat followed an 8.7-magnitude
earthquake in Indonesia on Sunday.
The Interior Ministry on Thursday confirmed that the country's death toll in
the devastating tsunamis has amounted to 1,975 as ofThursday morning, with 9,808
injuries and 6,043 reported missing.
After visited many of the affected areas by helicopter, Thaksinsaid the final
death count may reach 3,000 as new corpses continued to be discovered.
Thaksin also called for the acceleration of the rescue and disposal efforts
as many of the corpses were still piled up on beaches around the Andaman coast.
The total death toll has soared to 81,956 on Thursday across the Indian Ocean
region with the figure feared to exceed 100,000.
