Wednesday, January 26 2005 11:17 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Banda Aceh, Indonesia: One month after one of the world's worst ever natural disasters, tsunami-ravaged Asian countries are still reeling from its massive toll on humanity and a level of destruction that will take many years and billions of Dollars to repair.

Thousands of bodies are still being pulled from the rubble in Indonesia, hundreds of foreign tourists lie unidentified in mass graves in Thailand, while Sri Lanka and India grapple with the mammoth task of rebuilding their shattered coastal communities.

With the presumed death toll from the December 26 earthquake off Indonesia's Sumatra Island and the tsunamis it unleashed on Indian Ocean coastlines topping 280,000, the catastrophe now ranks as one of the worst natural disasters in the past 100 years. It is the deadliest tsunami ever.

In response, the United Nations is coordinating the largest humanitarian relief operation the world has seen, but the tragedy is unremitting.

In the worst hit countries, relief workers are still scrambling to find and bury the dead, get aid to the homeless and launch rebuilding projects.

Reconstruction is a far-off prospect in Indonesia's Aceh province, where the earthquake and tsunamis leveled Banda Aceh, Meulaboh and the rest of its west coast, leaving more than 228,000 people presumed dead.

Each sunrise in the province sheds light on new horrors, with last week about 3,500 cadavers pulled daily from beneath tonnes of debris - so many that they have stopped officially counting.

Yet the biggest problem facing disaster zones is not the dead, but the living.

Tens of thousands of survivors remain stranded in Aceh as a massive multinational aid effort battles to get food, medicine and shelter to cut-off communities.

Temporary camps in the province teem with hundreds of thousands of displaced people who have no homes, jobs or family to return to.

In Sri Lanka - the second worst-hit country with about 31,000 killed - more than 400,000 people are still being sheltered in public buildings, temples and churches along the Island's coast, with plans to move them into tent villages.

Weary and traumatised, they bear psychological as well as physical scars.

Warnings from the UN and World Health Organisation that disease outbreaks could double the disaster toll have subsided, with officials saying a major epidemic is "very, very unlikely" thanks to the global efforts to help the victims.

Even so, huge problems remain.

In Sri Lanka Tamil Tiger rebels and the Government have sparred over the distribution of aid, while in war-torn Aceh humanitarian organisations are battling more than the tsunami's devastation.

Their work is being hampered by flooding, a civil conflict between separatist guerrillas and Government troops, rumours of terrorist attacks and restrictions on their operations imposed by the Indonesian military.

Indonesia initially urged foreign troops helping the relief effort in the province to quit by March 26 but has since said that they can stay as long as their presence is scaled own.