The official death toll from the Asian tsunami climbed past 150,000 on Saturday, as Indonesian authorities increased their tally by nearly 3,000 while adding tens of thousands to their count of the number left homeless from the disaster. Officials expect the toll to rise further still. Indonesia's toll has risen sharply in recent days as teams of rescuers recover corpses from previously inaccessible regions, many on the western coast near the epicenter of the magnitude-9.0 quake that spawned a tsunami affecting 11 countries in Africa and Asia. The increase in number of dead came even as authorities held out little hope for the tens of thousands still missing. Officials in Sri Lanka and Thailand, which were also hard-hit by the killer waves, say thousands were unlikely to be found alive. Sweden, Britain and France have warned they feared that nearly 1,100 of their citizens missing in the disaster were dead. Nearly two weeks after huge waves struck, the lists of missing were still rising. Sri Lanka, with more than 30,000 known dead, added 528 names to its ranks of missing on Friday, for a total of 4,984. Indonesia, the worst hit country, estimates 104,055 dead and just over 10,000 missing. Aid workers struggled Saturday to reach the survivors _ and provide for their needs. Bad weather also slowed relief efforts. A heavy midafternoon rainstorm in Banda Aceh caused mountains of mud and debris collected on the roadsides to collapse into the street. Refugees ducked into tents for cover. --SP 1309 Local Time 1009 GMT
