Fears for tourists in tidal wave zone

In Johannesburg a spokesman for the South African foreign ministry said four people from that country were reported missing in Thailand, and the authorities in the low-lying Maldives Islands, which were hard hit by the disaster, said a British tourist had died of a heart attack.

Up to 10,000 British tourists could have been affected by the disaster, a British travel agency representative said in London.

The Foreign Office said no British tourists were so far reported missing, but officials in the low-lying Maldives islands, which were hard-hit by the tidal waves, said a British tourist had died of a heart attack as a result of the disaster.

The French and German foreign ministries have both set up crisis cells to deal with the catastrophe, which struck during the busy Christmas and New Year travel season, with European tourists flocking to south and southeast Asia.

"We don't have any information on French victims, we can't confirm any French people are missing," a French foreign ministry spokesman said.

More than 5,000 Italian travellers were in the region, most of them in Sri Lanka and the Maldives, Italian travel agencies said.

"The situation is very confused," Fracensco Granese of Assotravel told reporters. Another tour representative, Andrea Mele of "I viaggi del Mappamondo" said most of their clients in Thailand had not yet arrived in the area.

French tour operator Nouvelles Frontieres said around 1,000 French tourists were currently in the Maldives, and scores more in the Thai resort island of Phuket -- but there were no reports of victims to date.

Club Med said three of its holiday villages in Thailand and the Maldives had been affected by the quake and floods, but no one was missing, a spokesman for the group said.

Western Thailand, where Phuket is located, is the most popular tourist area in the country, attracting five million foreign travellers each year.