BANDA ACEH - The death toll from last month's Indian Ocean tsunami disaster rose towards a quarter of a million yesterday while floods hampered relief efforts in worst-hit Indonesia's Aceh province.

The Indonesian death toll has jumped to 166320, the health ministry said - more than 50000 higher than the government's previous tally.

Dr Ina, of the ministry's disaster centre, told AFP that 166080 people had been confirmed killed in Aceh, while there were 240 fatalities in the neighbouring province of North Sumatra.

With the latest tolls, the tsunamis triggered by a 9,0-magnitude quake off the coast of Sumatra have left nearly 220000 dead in 11 Indian Ocean countries.

Officials still hauling decomposed bodies from Aceh's tsunami debris said about 3500 cadavers were being removed each day, more than three weeks after the disaster, while monsoon floods created a new headache for relief workers trying to bring aid along inundated roads.

The secretary of Aceh's disaster control taskforce, Haniff Asmara, told AFP the body collection process was likely to take another month.

The United Nations' chief humanitarian co-ordinator, Jan Egeland, had earlier warned that the fatality figure could rise exponentially in Indonesia as information arrived from isolated areas.

Addressing an international financial summit in Jakarta yesterday, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said: "Perhaps we will never know the exact scale of the human casualties".

The giant waves which hit on December 26 killed about 31000 people in Sri Lanka and more than 5300 in Thailand. India has recorded 10744 deaths, with 5669 people still missing.

It is already the world's worst-ever tsunami disaster.

Relief officials said that floods were delaying trucks carrying supplies from reaching Banda Aceh.

International Organisation for Migration spokesman Chris Lom told AFP a convoy of 40 trucks returning from Banda Aceh, the aid distribution hub for Aceh, to the North Sumatran capital of Medan had been forced to halt its journey overnight because of floods.

Lom said aid workers were more concerned about the weather than a long-running separatist insurgency in the province and other threats. He expected the rain to pose a continuing concern as January and February were traditionally the wettest months of the year.

The Indonesian government has said it wants fresh peace talks with Aceh's separatist rebels and hopes to start dialogue later this month.

"Behind-the-scenes moves are ongoing toward reconciliation," Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda said yesterday.

"It is our hope ... that there will be a meeting by the end of this month." - Sapa-AFP