Governments and agencies set up crisis cells 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.

Travel agencies and government officials in various European capitals said up to 10,000 British tourists may have been affected, more than 5,000 Italians, up to 5,000 French, at least 4,000 Germans, more than 2,500 Swiss, some 2,000 Poles, over 1,000 Belgians and a similar number of Greeks.

Udomsak Aswarangkul, governor of Thailand's island resort of Phuket, said 162 out of 214 missing were foreign vacationers.

He put the known death toll at 117 in a live interview with broadcaster ITV, but did not specify if any were tourists.

Briton Alison Winward, an editor for the weekly English-language newspaper Phuket Gazette, said earlier that at least 20 foreign nationals were reported dead on the island.

The Belgian foreign ministry said two Belgian tourists, including a baby, had died at Phuket and another 17 were missing, and that it was worried about several hundred other Belgians out of around 1,000 holidaying in Thailand.

It also said it had no news from Belgians in Sri Lanka and the Maldives.

The French tourism giant Club Mediterranee said a French employee had been killed at Phuket, while Italy said 20 Italians had been injured there.

Portuguese holidaymaker Irina Carvalho, speaking to Portuguese media, told how a Swedish man clung on to his daughter and wife after a huge wave crashed into their boat off Phuket, "but when he recovered his senses he was out at sea and his daughter was gone."

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

In Moscow, the foreign ministry said a number of Russian tourists were holidaying on Phuket but no casualties were reported among them.

Authorities in the low-lying Maldives Islands said that a British tourist died of a heart attack, while tourism officials said "one or two were feared (dead) because they are missing" in the region.

A French tourist, Philippe Gilbert, told France's LCI news channel 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 held his breath long enough until the wave receded, he said.

In the Netherlands, the national tourist assistance organisation ANWB said it was seeking news of seven Dutch citizens missing in Thailand and three in Sri Lanka.

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

A Czech was missing in southern Thailand, according to the CTK news agency.

The French, German, Dutch, Greek, Czech and Italian foreign ministries set up crisis cells following the disaster, which struck during the busy Christmas and New Year travel season.

Agencies said they were setting up hotlines for relatives while sending as many planes as they could to bring their stranded customers home, cancelling many holidays already booked.

In Germany, the TUI and Thomas Cook travel agencies chartered planes which were due to take off from Sunday for Phuket, Colombo and Male to repatriate holidaymakers.

Two Airbus A330 jumbos were also lined up for take-off from Paris bound for Male, while French tourists in Phuket were to be regrouped in Bangkok.

In Switzerland the tour operator Kuoni, which has some 1,000 clients in the region, said it would dispatch an aircraft Monday to the Maldives to pick up tourists returning home.

Greece's foreign ministry said it had put an air force C-130 transport on standby, while an Olympic Airlines plane was due to leave Athens later Sunday to bring home Greek tourists from Thailand.

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