Disasters hit Asia-Pacific region hard : UN report

The release of the report at a conference of regional environment ministers came hours after a major earthquake rocked Indonesia, leaving hundreds and possibly thousands dead.

The region is still struggling to recover from the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 26 which the report said cost 295,000 lives.

"The number of deaths caused (by) natural disasters in the region accounted for about 85 percent of that of the world during the last century," said the report by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (Escap).

Since 1900 floods, cyclones, earthquakes, droughts, storms, tsunamis and haze were the most common natural disasters experienced in the Asia-Pacific, it said.

Australia, Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines and Vietnam were most frequently hit by natural disasters.

From 1990-2003, natural disasters cost the Asia-Pacific region some 380 billion dollars in economic losses, mostly from cyclones, floods and earthquakes, Escap said in a separate survey.

During the same period an estimated 6.8 million people died in the region as a result of such disasters, including 295,000 killed in the Indian Ocean tsunami late last year.

"These losses have much more severe socio-economic impacts on those developing and least-developed countries," said Kim Hak-Su, UN under secretary general and executive secretary of Escap.