Straw warns of increased British death toll
The Foreign Secretary has warned that the total number of British deaths in the tsunami hit regions could reach 440.
Speaking on Friday whilst on a visit to the region, Jack Straw confirmed the deaths of 49 Britons and said another 391 were missing, adding that these were highly likely to be among the 153,000 dead in the Indian Ocean nations hit by the disaster.
The British toll includes 36 confirmed dead in Thailand, ten in Sri Lanka and three in the Maldives.
“What we’ve sought to do is give the figures about confirmed deaths…and in addition to those, give the best estimates of the experts [on missing Britons],” Mr Straw told reporters during a visit to the Thai island resort of Phuket.
He said that the anxiety of the families of the missing was likely to be prolonged because of the scale of the task of identifying the bodies.
The Foreign Secretary said: “The agony of long uncertainty for many families and the scale of the effort still required is totally daunting.
“There are many hundreds of dead in the mortuary areas. It is impossible to tell the country of origin of most of those poor people.”
Forensic experts from more than 30 countries were involved in the effort to identify the tsunami victims, he said.
Mr Straw’s visit to the region, which included meeting the relatives of Britons killed in the Boxing Day disaster, follows visits by US Secretary of State Colin Powell and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
