The death toll from last weekend’s earthquake-tsunami catastrophe rose to more than 118,000 on Thursday as Indonesia uncovered more and more dead from ravaged Sumatra island, where planes dropped food to remote villages still unreachable by rescue workers. A false alarm that new killer waves were about to hit sparked panic in India, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

The higher toll came after Indonesia reported nearly 28,000 newly confirmed dead in Sumatra, which was closest to the epicenter of last weekend’s massive earthquake and was overwhelmed by the tsunami that followed. Some 60 percent of Banda Aceh, the main city in northern Sumatra was destroyed, the U.N. children’s agency estimated, and 180 kilometers of the island’s northwest coast was inundated.

Tens of thousands of residents fled coasts in India, Sri Lanka and Thailand after warnings that a new tsunami was about to strike after new aftershocks hit the Indian Ocean Thursday.

India issued a tsunami warning at midday, but then hours later its science minister, Kapil Sibal, went on television to announce the warning was incorrect and based on information received from a U.S. research firm.

Fears of a new tsunami were“unscientific, hogwash and should be discarded,”Sibal said.

Still, the alert sparked panic among people traumatized by Sunday’s devastation.

Sri Lanka’s military later told residents to be vigilant but not to panic, while coastal villagers climbed onto rooftops or sought high ground.“There is total confusion here,”said Rohan Bandara in the coastal town of Tangalle.

Tsunami sirens in southern Thailand sent people dashing from beaches, but only small waves followed the alarms.

An estimated 5.7 magnitude aftershock was recorded in seas northwest of Indonesia’s Sumatra island by the Hong Kong observatory Thursday morning, along with earlier, overnight quakes at India’s Andaman and Nicobar islands. But a 5.7 quake would be about 1,000 times less powerful than Sunday’s, and probably would have“negligible impact,”said geologist Jason Ali of University of Hong Kong.

The false alarm highlighted the lack of an organized tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean region, which experts have already said may have worsened the crisis after Sunday’s 9.0 magnitude quake hit off Sumatra’s coast.

Sibal, the Indian science minister, said Thursday’s warning was based on information from a U.S. research group that“claimed they have some sensors and equipment through which they suggest there was a possibility of an earthquake.”

He did not elaborate on how the information was incorrect.