BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Pilots dropped food to Indonesian villagers stranded among corpses yesterday, while police in a devastated provincial capital stripped looters of their clothing and forced them to sit on the street as a warning to others. The death toll topped 119,000, and officials warned that 5 million people lack clean water, shelter, food, sanitation and medicine.

American planes delivered medical staff to Sri Lanka and body bags to Thailand, while a Thai air base used by B-52 bombers during the Vietnam War was becoming a hub for a U.S. military-led relief effort that will stretch along the Indian Ocean.

As a colossal international rescue effort struggled off the ground, relief work suffered a hitch when a false alarm of more killer waves sparked panic in India, Sri Lanka and Thailand and sent survivors and aid workers fleeing.

Indian women at a makeshift camp in a marriage hall said their children were going hungry. "For the past few days we were at least getting food," said Selvi, 35, who uses only one name. "Today, we didn't even get that because aid workers fled the town after a fresh alert was issued this morning."

The false alarm from the Indian government, issued after a warning from an Oregon quake forecaster whose work is dismissed by mainstream scientists, was just one of the new and sometimes unexpected threats facing survivors.

Sister Charity, a 32-year-old nun rescued by an Indian navy ship from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands on Wednesday, said hungry crocodiles had been swept inland by the huge waves.

"As we were returning [to the ship], two or three crocodiles started coming toward us. The navy officers had to fire their revolvers to ward off the crocodiles to protect us," she said.

In the remote Indian islands near the epicenter of Sunday's magnitude-9.0 earthquake, entire villages were wiped out. With only 400 bodies found so far, the region's administrator said 10,000 people were missing. Survivors who reached the archipelago's main city, Port Blair, said they had not eaten for two days.

SCOTT BARBOUR / GETTY IMAGES A homeless boy rummages among the wreckage yesterday in Kalutura, Sri Lanka. Americans in Sri Lanka have been showing up at U.S. consular offices wearing bathing suits, with no money and no clothes, a State Department spokesman said.

Around the Indian Ocean's rim and beyond, families endured their fifth day of not knowing the fate of friends and relatives who had been vacationing on the sunny beaches of Thailand, India and Sri Lanka, which bore the brunt of the tsunami. Thousands were still missing, including at least 2,500 Swedes, more than 1,000 Germans and 500 each from France and Denmark.

The U.S. death toll was raised from 12 to 14, with seven dead in Thailand and seven in Sri Lanka. About 600 Americans who were listed as missing have been located, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said, but several thousand more had not been found four days after the disaster struck.

In Sri Lanka, Americans have been showing up at U.S. consular offices wearing bathing suits, with no money and no clothes, Boucher said.

Death tolls across the region continued to grow. Indonesia led with about 80,000. Sri Lanka reported 27,200 and India more than 7,300. Thailand announced a near doubling of its figure to more than 4,500. Officials said that number included 2,230 foreigners.

A total of more than 300 were killed in Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Somalia, Tanzania and Kenya.

Military ships and planes rushed aid to Sumatra's ravaged coast. Countless corpses were strewn on the streets under the tropical sun, causing a nearly unbearable stench.

In Banda Aceh, the devastated main city of northern Sumatra, soldiers and police guarded abandoned shops in the city's market amid fears of looting. Three alleged looters caught by police were put on the street, stripped to their underpants as a deterrent.

Relief supply drops began along the coast, mostly of instant noodles and medicines, with some of the areas "hard to reach because they are surrounded by cliffs," said Budi Aditutro, head of the government's relief team.

The World Health Organization said it needed $40 million to supply up to 5 million people with clean water, shelter, food, sanitation and health care.

"Unless the necessary funds are urgently mobilized and coordinated in the field, we could see as many fatalities from diseases as we have seen from the actual disaster itself," said Dr. David Nabarro, head of crisis operations at WHO.

The next few days will be critical in controlling any potential outbreak of waterborne diseases in areas affected by the tsunami, Nabarro said. The main threat to public health was drinking water that had been contaminated with feces.

Governments have so far donated about $500 million, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said, adding that he was "satisfied" by the response, even though another U.N. official earlier complained that the West had been "stingy."

Responding to persistent criticism that U.S. pledges have been slow to materialize and deliveries of aid not fast enough, Boucher ticked off a string of relief flights and declared: "Any implication we are not leading the way is wrong."

The United States, India, Australia, Japan and the United Nations have formed an international coalition to coordinate worldwide relief and reconstruction efforts.

A U.S. Air Force plane arrived in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, bringing 26 medical specialists from the Army, Marines and Air Force. American planes have delivered 1,400 body bags to southern islands in Thailand.

Up to 1,000 U.S. military personnel are likely to arrive in Thailand in the next week, Lt. Col. Scott Elder said. A U.S. Navy aircraft-carrier battle group is heading from Hong Kong to the shores of Sumatra. And the first of many Air Force C-130 cargo planes has landed in Indonesia with blankets, plastic sheeting and medicines.

One bit of encouraging news came out of the Maldives, the Indian Ocean archipelago that is the world's lowest-lying country. Officials believe that at an average of just 3 feet above sea level, it lacked the conditions for a full-scale tsunami to build up. That meant casualties and damage, while considerable, were less than in neighboring countries. Seventy-three people are confirmed dead and 31 are missing.

The islands' mainstay, tourism, looked likely to rebound quickly. Foreign tourists were back in the water and resort hotel rooms were reopening.

"My friends and family told me to go back home. But I told them I'd be more comfortable here than in the cold," said Michaela Niedermeyer, 43, of Vienna, Austria, who jumped on an inflatable mattress and paddled to shore after her bungalow was swamped by the tsunami.