The aid effort is under way to help the survivors of the sea surges triggered by a massive earthquake in the Indian Ocean. BBC correspondents report from affected areas around the region and beyond.
Sunday 2 January
Frances Harrison : Mullaitivu, northern Sri Lanka : 1635 GMT
Tamil Tiger rebels wearing pink rubber gloves and surgical masks are still searching for corpses in ponds and water-logged areas. It's a terrible job.
By now the bodies are so decomposed they fall apart when handled and it's impossible to identify them.
Funeral pyres dot the area where teams are working. Travelling by boat, they use sticks and sometimes even their bare feet to try to find the bodies under the water.
The affected areas have been sealed off to civilians but it's a race against time. If the dead bodies are not recovered, medical units are worried there could be an epidemic of diseases like cholera and dysentery.
Dominic Hughes : Phuket, Thailand : 1515 GMT
One of the problems here is how to keep bodies for identification.
There are forensic scientists from 18 different countries getting DNA samples from bone and hair. To understand the scale of the problem: it took scientists five months to identify those 200 or so people who died in Bali.
Thousands of Thai victims have been cremated in mass cremations already, but, under pressure from Western governments we believe, many bodies of tourists have been preserved in ice trucks or lorries so they have a chance to be identified.
It will be a difficult and grim task.
Jonathan Charles : Car Nicobar, Andaman Islands : 1310 GMT
Up to 50% of the population here is unaccounted for. People have patched up the runway on the airstrip and food and water is getting in for people, but this is very inhospitable territory.
People have said they don't want aid agencies to come here because it means more mouths to feed - they say they have enough military personnel to cope and extra people puts more pressure on them.
I'm the first foreigner to set foot here in around five years, and the thought here is that the authorities might not want more outsiders around.
The people I've seen are in a state of shock after the disaster. People are living under trees for shelter. Everyone has a story of suffering and they don't know what their future holds.
Dominic Hughes : Phuket, Thailand : 1305 GMT
The situation here is substantially different from other countries affected. Thailand has a pretty well developed infrastructure, but was still very badly hit.
There are now 5,000 confirmed dead and many more missing. The number of the dead could well rise, and about half of those could be foreign tourists.
Some have been arriving here in a desperate search to identify someone or find loved ones alive. Thai authorities are now urging people to stay away, because in the makeshift morgues some of the bodies are unrecognisable after five or six days' heat.
DNA recognition is now the key, which can be done from the relatives' home countries.
Rachel Harvey : Banda Aceh : 1250 GMT
In Banda Aceh's relief coordination centre international aid experts and Indonesian officials are huddled around tables talking logistics.
They've come from far and wide - Australia, the United States, Japan and Europe - all with one purpose: to get help to those who've been struggling to stay alive since the earthquake and tsunami struck.
Some aid has been brought in by helicopters to those stranded in areas inaccessible by any other means, but a lot more is needed.
But the grim task of recovering bodies continues.
One week on in the provincial capital corpses are still lying in the streets and floating in the river.
Jonathan Charles : Car Nicobar, Andaman Islands : 1158 GMT
Car Nicobar military airbase was devastated by the earthquake and sea surges.
Around the damaged landing strip lie dozens of collapsed buildings and search teams are continuing to look through the rubble for the many bodies still underneath.
More than one hundred Indian air force personnel and their families were killed here - just a few of the 10,000 inhabitants thought to be either dead or missing.
The runway is barely serviceable, but the Indian military is now managing to fly in plane-loads of supplies.
In the coastal village of Malaka I saw nothing but ruins - every house crushed by the wall of water which arrived without warning.
The highest point in Car Nicobar is just 12 metres above sea level, so people here and in other villages had nowhere to run for shelter - that's why so many died.
Dominic Hughes : Phuket, Thailand : 1051 GMT
The Thai authorities are carefully revising their casualty figures as the picture becomes clearer.
Nearly 5,000 people are now confirmed to have died, and half or more of those appear to be foreign tourists.
The Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is touring some of the worst affected areas.
He said he was considering how to establish a tsunami early warning system, which he said Thailand would pursue, even if other countries chose not to.
There are now 18 teams of forensic scientists working with Thai forces to try to identify the dead using bone samples and dental records.
And a week after the disaster, religious services have been held across the country to remember those who died.
Nick Bryant : Tamil Nadu, India : 0932 GMT
Inland you get a sense of the scale of the destruction, and of the destructive power of the waves. Buildings constructed from reinforced concrete have been completely destroyed.
A community of 1,500 children was killed.
Many of them tried to rush to a nursery nearby. They innocently thought they would be safe inside but very few made it.
Along this coastline in Tamil Nadu 40% of the victims were children - they were too small and couldn't run fast enough to escape the waves.
Dominic Hughes : Phuket, Thailand : 0542 GMT
A week after the Asian tsunami struck, the Thai authorities are cautiously revising their casualty figures. In total, more than 6,400 are reported missing and about 4,800 confirmed dead.
But officials are warning that these figures will change. The difficulty in identifying the dead means that it may be weeks before the real cost in human life is known.
A very few people who were thought to be missing are still being found alive.
What is becoming clear though is that as well as the thousands of Thais who died, around half the dead, and perhaps more, were foreign holidaymakers.
Gina Wilkinson : Galle, Sri Lanka : 0536 GMT
Flood waters are slowly receding along the battered east coast but roads are still impassable in some of the hardest hit areas in the south-east, where thousands of people are dependent on emergency supplies ferried in by helicopter or boat.
Authorities say so far there have been no large outbreaks of waterborne disease but the torrential rain has greatly increased the risk of sickness and infection, particularly among children and the elderly.
With more heavy downpours forecast later in the week, aid workers are also racing to provide shelter for the homeless.
Jonathan Head : Banda Aceh, Indonesia : 0511 GMT
Rubble and debris are now being trucked out of Banda Aceh and set alight alongside the roads out of the town. Dented and mud-spattered cars swept up by the flood are being towed away and slowly cleaned up.
It's a crude method but there is at least some sense of life returning here, although the town centre is still an apocalyptic wasteland.
Some food is being given to the tens of thousands of displaced people in Banda Aceh - but outside the town the picture is still alarming. US helicopters have dropped aid in some remote areas but were unable to land.
Many small communities are still completely cut off, the survivors living without food or clean water for a week.
Jonathan Charles : Andaman Islands, India : 0300 GMT
The Indian military believe they are slowly making headway. A week after disaster struck, aid has finally reached all of the inhabited islands in the Andaman and Nicobar group, some of them just a short distance from the epicentre of the earthquake which triggered last weekend's devastating sea surges.
The commander of the military operation, Gen B S Thakur, says aircraft have now managed to drop food and water onto the most remote locations. It's thought that thousands of survivors may be sheltering on high ground on some of the islands, desperate for help.
Many bodies are apparently lying in the open air. The authorities haven't been able to get to them and there are increasing fears that unless they are buried or cremated soon outbreaks of disease will be inevitable.
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