Pacific tsunami toll 113 and rising

The confirmed death toll from a massive South Pacific earthquake and tsunami had risen to 113 by late Tuesday and was expected to rise further, officials said.

Dozens more people were missing and feared dead, but officials in the three South Pacific island nations said communications were down to many outlying villages.

“There are 47 known dead,” the press secretariat at the prime minister’s department in Apia said in a brief statement following a meeting of the Disaster Management Council.

The editor of the Samoa Observer newspaper, Russell Hunter, said the toll would certainly rise.

“There are a lot more elsewhere in the villages and under covers on the ground. It’s likely the toll will reach 100 or probably a bit more,” Hunter said. In American Samoa, about 100 kilometres (63 miles) from Samoa, Homeland Security director Michael Sala said the tsunami which followed about 20 minutes after the earthquake, did most of the damage.

“We have 22 confirmed dead and it could go much higher,” said Sala who added the wall of water, which he estimated at 25-feet (7.5 metres) high, swept ashore demolishing buildings. The eastern part of American Samoa was without power and water supplies after the devastating earthquake, which struck at 6:48 am (1748 GMT).

In Tonga, government officials said there were six dead and four missing on the small island of Niuatoputapu.

The officials flew over the island from the capital Nuku’alofa but were unable to land because of damage to the airstrip. They said they would make their way there by sea overnight to assess the full extent of the damage.