Scandinavians, Germans brace for casualty reports from Asia

STOCKHOLM -- People in Scandinavia and Germany, fond of viewing Asia as a winter refuge, faced up to the possibility that a tsunami had turned a tropical paradise into hell for hundreds of friends and loved ones.

More than 2,000 Scandinavians and 1,000 Germans were still missing yesterday, a full three days after disaster struck.

European leaders held out hope for signs of life while simultaneously trying to prepare their peoples for the worst.

Throughout Europe, the Indian Ocean disaster dominated the news. Some channels extended broadcasts to cover the tragedy.

Norway's foreign minister said the tsunami, a wall of water that killed around 70,000 people, threatened to become one of the worst disasters for his nation in modern times.

''This will affect Swedish lives for a long time to come," Prime Minister Goran Persson said, shortly after King Carl XVI Gustaf made a rare public broadcast to express his grief.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer urged people to give money to victims instead of buying New Year fireworks, and across Scandinavia there were signs that towns and ordinary people would do the same.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder cancelled his holiday as the scale of the tragedy became clear. He told citizens to expect that hundreds of missing compatriots had been killed, as did Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini, who announced that 600 Italians were missing.

''We have to prepare for the worst," he said.

Sweden, accused by local media of underestimating the problem, sent its foreign minister to Thailand, and the Scandinavian airline SAS scrambled extra planes to fly holidaymakers home.

''The government made blunder after blunder, the people's verdict could be harsh," the Aftonbladet newspaper wrote.

But some Norwegian tourists said Swedish diplomats had stepped in when they got little help from their own government.

Two Norwegian brothers aged 8 and 10 arrived alone and bare-foot at Copenhagen airport from Bangkok, not knowing what had become of their parents, the Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende reported.