Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa has appealed to organizers to stop all scheduled functions forthwith for the national disaster that befallen Sri Lanka, official sources said Tuesday.

Sri Lanka is to evade existing regulations temporarily to speed up funeral as thousands of bodies piled up in over-crowded hospitals after the island suffered the heaviest losses from tidal waves which swept across Asia on Sunday, sources said.

Government spokesman and senior minister Susil Premajayantha said they decided to streamline procedures for the speedy return of corpses to next of kin as part of an unprecedented clean up operation.

Rajapaksa said in a statement to the media that Sri Lankan people need to be conscious and mindful of the fact of the calamities fallen on a section of the people and should put resources together to help them in their hour of need.

He also appealed to the organizers to donate the monies allocated for tamashas and other social functions and to share the grief of those suffering from the disaster.

So far, The military and Tamil Tiger rebels who hold large parts of the island's north said the body count was 11,000, including 70 foreign nationals caught up in the tsunami that devastated three quarters of the island's coastline Sunday.