Even as Thailand's official death toll from the tsunamis was climbing close to 2,000 yesterday, the government count of those still missing reached 4,265. Many of the missing tourists are buried in the mud and rubble of Khao Lak, 10 kilometres of upscale resorts and hotels that catered to affluent Europeans and North Americans.

The stench of death was proof of the bodies beneath the sand. This is ground zero for Thailand's catastrophe. The scale of the devastation here is almost incomprehensible.

As far as the eye can see, almost every building has been levelled or gutted, as if a bomb had exploded. Concrete pillars are snapped like twigs. Cars and buses have been tossed about like toys, thrown as high as two-storey buildings or dragged a kilometre into the jungle.

Even four days after the disaster, workers yesterday were still pulling bodies from wrecked hotel rooms and lagoons where the tsunamis had scattered them.

"We're only digging up the visible corpses, where we can see a hand or a foot," said Thanachai Pukhew, one of about 1,000 emergency workers and military personnel who continued to toil around Khao Lak yesterday. "We're not digging into the mud, yet."

The workers said they needed bigger and stronger coffins. They were trying to put the dead tourists into flimsy plywood ones, but the coffins broke under the weight of the bloated bodies.

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