Struggling relief

In Khao Lak, Thailand, where more than 2,200 foreign tourists are known to have died, weary volunteers and aid workers piled body after body into temporary mortuaries.

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 handwritten 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. Residents complained that soldiers were keeping food for their families.

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 strips of black cloth. Governments urged revellers to rein in excesses and spare thoughts for victims and money for survivors. 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.

Sri Lanka, further from the quake’s epicentre but savagely hit, has put its death toll at 28,508. ‘‘The true figure will probably never be known because people are burying the corpses where they find them,’’ said Anjali Kwatra, an aid worker. —Reuters