Rich and poor alike were swept up by Asia's killer tsunami, with a supermodel, multi-millionaire football players, royalty and movie stars among those running for their lives.
Czech supermodel Petra Nemcova clung to a palm tree for eight hours in the devastated Thai resort of Khao Lak after being hit by a wall of water in Sunday's deadly tidal waves, her publicist in New York said.
PHOTO: AP
Her British boyfriend, fashion photographer Simon Atlee, is missing.
PHOTO: AFP
"People were screaming and kids were screaming all over the place, screaming `help, help.' And after a few minutes you didn't hear the kids any more," Nemcova told the New York Daily News from her hospital bed in Thailand.
"There were so many people with horrible injuries, with blood everywhere. It was like a war movie," she said.
The 25-year-old, who has gra-ced the front cover of Sports Illustrated's special swimsuit issue and also modeled Victoria's Secret lingerie line, suffered a broken pelvis and internal injuries.
There was no lucky escape for Bhumi Jensen, the 21-year-old grandson of Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who was killed at the same popular resort area when the waves struck.
"It's a national tragedy," said a grim-faced Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. The monarchy is revered in Thailand.
Bhumi is the son of Princess Ubolratana and her estranged American husband Peter Jensen. He was holidaying with his mother at the time but she was safe.
British actor and film director Richard Attenborough was also in mourning after the death of his granddaughter in the catastrophe.
Lucy was among a family group staying on Phuket island, said Diana Hawkins, a colleague and friend of the Attenborough family. Attenborough's eldest daughter Jane is missing, as is her mother-in-law, Jane Holland.
"Lord Attenborough and his wife, Sheila, have lost three mem-bers of their immediate family in the tidal wave disaster that hit the beaches of Thailand on Boxing Day morning," a statement from Hawkins said.
The 81-year-old is one of the most successful actors and directors Britain has ever produced, finding fame appearing in films such as Brighton Rock and The Great Escape.
As a director, his biggest triumph was Gandhi, which won eight Oscars in 1983, including best film and best director.
Chinese action hero Jet Li survived the horror on the picture-postcard Maldives, sustaining minor injuries when the tidal wave triggered by an undersea earthquake off Indonesia swamped the hotel where he was staying.
Li, who starred in Hollywood flicks including Lethal Weapon 4 and Romeo Must Die grabbed his four-year-old daughter when their hotel room started to flood and escaped, the Singtao Daily reported, citing his management.
Stars of the sporting arena were also caught up in the tsunami nightmare that has left more than 55,000 people dead.
A number of Italian football players were also holidaying in the Maldives when the full force of the tidal wave hit, Gazzetta dello Sport reported.
Among them were AC Milan's Paolo Maldini, Alessandro Nesta, Filippo Inzaghi and Cristian Brocchi, and Juventus defender Gianluca Zambrotta.
The newspaper's Web site said they were safe.
Sri Lankan cricket spin king Muttiah Muralitharan declared himself "lucky to be alive" after narrowly missing one of the tsunamis that killed over 17,000 people in his home country.
Muralitharan told the Sydney Morning Herald he drove out of the southern city of Galle just minutes before it was swamped by a massive surge of water.
Among others fleeing the tragedy in southern Sri Lanka was former German chancellor Helmut Kohl, who was helicoptered from his guesthouse at Talpe, a suburb of Galle.
Back in Thailand, skiing great Ingemar Stenmark ran for his life when he saw an immense wave heading towards him in Khok Kloi, offshore from Phuket.
"The water from the first wave disappeared, but then it came back with terrifying speed," Stenmark, who won two gold medals at the 1980 Olympics, told Swedish media.
Australian AFL star Troy Broadbridge was not so lucky, being swept away from his wife as the strolled along a Phuket beach, his club Melbourne Demons said.
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
Prime ministers, presidents and royalty on Saturday descended on Cairo to attend the spectacle-laden inauguration of a sprawling new museum built near the pyramids to house one of the world’s richest collections of antiquities. The inauguration of the Grand Egyptian Museum, or GEM, marks the end of a two-decade construction effort hampered by the Arab Spring uprisings, the COVID-19 pandemic and wars in neighboring countries. “We’ve all dreamed of this project and whether it would really come true,” Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly told a news conference, calling the museum a “gift from Egypt to the whole world from a
RSS