European governments and agencies set up crisis centres and hotlines and offered help to the countries swept by the giant tsunamis sparked by a huge earthquake off Indonesia, as they prepared to send planes to bring their citizens home.

Briton Alison Winward, an editor for the weekly English-language paper Phuket Gazette, said that 66 people, including 20 foreign nationals, were reported dead on the Thai resort island of Phuket, a further 22 were missing and 691 injured, according to Kawee Sukunthamath chief of the Phuket Office of Disaster Prevention and Management.

A spokeswoman for Patong Hospital, close to the western side of Phuket were the wave hit, said they had more than 50 bodies at the hospital and were treating around 400 people, many of them foreigners.

South Africa's foreign ministry said four of its citizens were reported missing, also in Thailand.

In the Netherlands, the Dutch tourist assistance organization ANWB reported three Dutch nationals missing in Sri Lanka, but this could not be officially confirmed.

The authorities in the low-lying Maldives Islands, which were hard hit by the racing floodwaters, 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.

Keith Betton of the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) said his organization was in the process of assessing whom to fly home, and cancelling some holidays of people about to go.

Tourism officials said in addition to the Briton who died in the Maldives, "one or two were feared (dead) because they are missing" in the region.

A Czech was missing in southern Thailand, the CTK news agency quoted Prague's ambassador in Bangkok, Jiri Sitler, as saying, while another was in hospital with injuries.

Athens travel agencies said more than 1,000 Greeks were in the regions affected, while the Mega television station said two, a man and a woman in Phuket, had been injured and were having difficulty reaching hospitals.

Portuguese holidaymaker Irina Carvalho, speaking by telephone to Portugal's Lusa news agency and TSF radio station from the Thai island of Phi Phi, said a boat she was on had taken aboard two Greeks and a Swedish man, who was hurt when the wave hit the restaurant where he was dining with his wife, daughter aged four and son aged seven.

"He said that he clung on to his daughter and his wife to their son, but when he recovered his senses he was out at sea and his daughter was gone," Carvalho said.

Lusa also reported an eight-month-old Portuguese baby girl had been swept from her parents' arms by a wave at Phuket.

A French tourist, Philippe Gilbert, told France's LCI news channel that he had lost his granddaughter when an "absolutely monstrous" wave struck his bungalow at Tangalla in southern Sri Lanka.

He had the luck to be caught in the tops of trees and to hold his breath long enough until the wave receded, he said.

Other testimonies to European television stations spoke of people being left with nothing but their swimming clothes after fleeing the giant waves, and waiting for hours without food for assistance.

The French, German, Dutch, Greek, Czech and Italian foreign ministries 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.

Greece's foreign ministry had also put an air force C-130 transport on standby and dispatched its diplomats in the region to the stricken areas.

France was sending experts to Colombo to assess the situation ahead of a relief team expected to be on the way from Monday, the interior ministry said.

Britain and Germany also offered help to countries including India, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and the Maldives.

Ireland had earmarked an initial one million euros for the victims, the foreign ministry in Dublin said, while in Switzerland the Red Cross and the Caritas charity released 400,000 Swiss francs (258,700 euros), while in France Caritas made 100,000 euros available.

One French tour operator, Nouvelles Frontieres, said around 1,000 French tourists were in the Maldives, while another, Fram, said it was without news of 20 people in the Maldives and Sri Lanka, but blamed a breakdown in communications, saying none had been reported missing.

Club Mediterranee, Nouvelles Frontieres, TUI and Fram set up hotlines for relatives of its customers holidaying in southern Asia and tourists planning to go there soon.

Sri Lanka's tourist office in Paris meanwhile urged holidaymakers with tickets for the island to put off their journeys.

"Some hotels have been hit by the flooding and their guests evacuated for their safety," a statement said.

In Poland Anna Kobus, quoted by the PAP news agency, said her daughter had called her from Phuket to say she was safe "but people who had gone to the beach are all dead."

Polish foreign ministry spokesman Aleksander Checko said that up to 2,000 Poles could be in the region but none were thought to be among the casualties.

More than 5,000 Italian travellers were in the region, most of them in Sri Lanka and the Maldives, Italian travel agencies said, as crisis cell coordinator Guido Bertolaso urged his compatriots not to go to the region.

Rete television channel chief Emilio Fede, speaking from the Maldives atoll of Madoogali, said all the Italians holidaying in the archipelago were safe but damage was considerable.

More than 2,500 Swiss tourists, most of them in the Maldives and Thailand, were in the affected area, Swiss tour operators said, but none were known to be casualties.

Germany's TUI, Europe's top travel agency, said it was in the process of gathering information on how many German tourists were in the area, but a spokesman said the communication was "extremely difficult."

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