Pledges pour in, cash needed now
Powell says carnage is like nothing he has seen before
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| ON CNN TV | Watch "Saving the Children," a special focusing on the disaster's young victims. The program airs on CNN at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET Sunday.
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 The tsunamis are having a devastating impact on the tourism economies of some stricken nations.
 The tsunamis have had a lasting impact on the children who witnessed them.
 Relief efforts in Banda Aceh were stalled when a U.S. cargo aircraft hit cattle on the runway.
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BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (CNN) -- South Asian countries will need $977 million in cash assistance over the next six months to recover from the tsunami disaster, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said.
Annan spoke at the opening of a regional summit aimed at helping Indian Ocean nations rebuild after the December 26 disaster, when a massive earthquake triggered tsunamis that devastated coastal areas of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand and killed people as far away as east Africa.
He told delegates that the international community must work "to stop the tsunami from being followed by a second wave of death, from preventable causes."
"Together, we have the power to stop those next waves," he said. (Full story)
The international community has stepped forward with pledges of more financial assistance totalling $3 billion for countries devastated by the tsunami.
In addition to raising money, the conference is focusing on the coordination of relief efforts and overcoming bottlenecks that are slowing the delivery of aid.
New promises of aid money came from Australia and Germany on Wednesday.
"We are not able really to record all the generous contributions that we are getting," said U.N. emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland.
"They are coming so often, and they are so big that we really have to confirm that we heard right, that the number of zeroes was right."
Australian Prime Minister John Howard said his country will donate an additional billion Australian dollars (US$764.5 million) to a partnership with Indonesia for rehabilitation in the wake of the tsunami disaster. (Full story)
Earlier on Wednesday, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder announced the German government was increasing its pledge to 500 million euros (US$660 million). (Full story)
Some observers have said a bidding war was underway.
The United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator says he is pleased to see what he calls "competitive compassion."
Jan Egeland had earlier called wealthy nations "stingy" with their early response to the disaster.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell had a firsthand look at damage in the Indonesian province of Aceh on Wednesday.
"I have never seen anything like this," Powell, a military veteran, told reporters at a news conference in the provincial capital of Banda Aceh following a two-hour helicopter tour of the surrounding area with Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the brother of U.S. President George W. Bush.
"We've all seen pictures on our television sets and in our newspapers of the damage that occurred here, but only by seeing it in person from a helicopter flying low over the city can you get a real appreciation of what it must have been like when the tsunami came through and caused so much death and destruction."
Powell spoke shortly before millions of people in Europe observed three minutes of silence to mourn the dead and missing. (Full story)
Meanwhile, a senior U.S. official said Powell is growing frustrated with the slow process of whittling down the list of unaccounted-for Americans and has told his aides he wants faster progress.
Powell said there is a need to get dental records and DNA samples from relatives of those remaining unaccounted for. The bodies now being recovered are decomposed and bloated, making them hard to identify. (Full story)
The death toll from the earthquake and tsunamis, which shattered tourist resorts and seaside communities from Thailand to East Africa, has topped 155,000.
More than 94,000 of the dead were in Indonesia.
Banda Aceh airport has become the nerve center of the relief effort on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, which bore the brunt of the earthquake.
Powell, who will brief the U.S. president and members of Congress when he returns to Washington, said the trip gave him a better understanding of the needs of Banda Aceh and the challenges facing the Indonesian government.
Washington has said it plans to double the number of U.S. military helicopters operating in the tsunami-stricken region from 46 to more than 90. (Full story)
The United States has so far pledged $350 million for relief efforts, and Powell promised more if it is needed "because of the human dimensions of this catastrophe."
Powell said on Tuesday in Thailand that the United States had thrown its financial and military weight into southern Asia relief efforts, not to gain favor in the Islamic world but because it's what Americans do.(Full story)
Indonesia is the largest Muslim nation in the world and was the hardest hit by the disaster.
Marines in Sri Lanka
A contingent of U.S. Marines is in Sri Lanka, where more than 46,000 people have died and at least 14,000 are missing.
In India, officials report that almost 6,000 people are missing on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which run northward from Sumatra in the Bay of Bengal. Most of those -- more than 4,600 -- are missing from a single small island, Katchal.
So far, India's death toll is 9,682.
India has experienced the same difficulties as Indonesia in reaching the remote islands, which are closer to Indonesia and Thailand than to their mother country.
Because they are islands, access is even more limited, as few have any place to land an aircraft and the waves destroyed boat docks.
Other developments
Indonesian authorities have taken steps to protect displaced or orphaned children from traffickers after the disaster, barring people from leaving the country with children under 16 from its hard-hit Aceh province. (Full story)Sweden has begun paying homage to the many nationals who died, putting on a formal and symbolic ceremony for the first bodies returning to home soil. (Full story)Myanmar's rocky shoreline and the angle of the coast prevented the damage that killed more than 5,000 in Thailand and thousands more on India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which are about 200 miles (320 km) off the coast, a Red Cross official told CNN (Full story)CNN Correspondents Mike Chinoy in Aceh, Satinder Bindra in Sri Lanka, and Aneesh Raman contributed to this report.
Copyright 2005 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
