Reuters Posted online: Tuesday, December 28, 2004 at 1627 hours IST
Paris, December 28: The number of French victims of the tsunami in southern Asia has risen to 22, and several dozen French citizens are still missing, deputy French foreign minister Renaud Muselier said on Tuesday.
"We are without news of dozens of French people," he told RMC radio.
Muselier said there were 29 French missing at French-based European hotel group Accor's Sofitel hotel on Khao Lak beach in Thailand, an area where hundreds of people were killed when a giant tsunami ripped across the coastline.
"We are putting in place the biggest humanitarian operation in history," Muselier said.
Foreign Minister Michel Barnier was due to arrive in Sri Lanka two days after the giant wall of water triggered by an earthquake in Sumatra spread through the region popular with Christmas holiday tourists escaping the winter cold in Europe.
He will later visit Thailand.
Accor said it was still without news of some 500 people at its hotel in Khao Lak. Some 350 tourists and 250 staff were at the resort when the tsunami hit, but so far just 100 have been identified and transferred to Bangkok.
The hotel group said most of the tourists staying at the hotel were Germans. There were around 30 French guests, of whom 15 had been transferred to Bangkok, it said.
Paris has earmarked 100,000 euros ($135,400) for initial rescue efforts in Thailand. On Monday, it sent a plane with about 100 rescue workers and 5 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Sri Lanka.
The French Red Cross said on Tuesday it was sending to Sri Lanka a medical team and four tonnes of medicine, enough to treat 20,000 people for three months.
