We are now confronted with a huge human tragedy in Asia. On day after my last post, the last information talked about more than 23’000 dead people with thousands more missings, specially in some Indian islands near Sumatra. Millions of people lost their homes……

The quake, the fourth largest recorded since 1900 and measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale, occurred after a rupture on the Indian Ocean seabed caused by the violent grinding of two tectonic plates.

Sri Lanka and India were severely hit with respective death tolls of 10,897 and 6,597, while the number of dead in Indonesia rose to 4,725. A further 866 deaths were reported in Thailand, 51 in Malaysia, 43 in the Maldives, 30 in Myanmar and two in Bangladesh.

Huge waves swept some 7,000 kilometres (4,000 miles) as far as Africa, crashing on to the shores of Kenya and Somalia, affecting the islands of Mauritius, Reunion and the Seychelles on the way. More than 100 Somali fishermen were reported missing feared dead.