Samoa tsunami: 16 British tourists missing on Pacific island

British High Commission officials are searching the islands for the tourists in the wake of the disaster which has claimed almost 150 lives so far.

Clive Green, who represents the commission in New Zealand, flew into Apia, the capital of Samoa, on Thursday to try to locate them and help others affected by the disaster.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, he said he had tracked down 15 British passport holders who were "safe and well" but that he was still trying to contact another 16 who were on the island when the giant wall of water that crashed onto the country's southeastern shore early on Tuesday morning.

The tsunami, which was triggered by a powerful underwater earthquake close to Tonga, has devastated large swaths of coastline on Samoa and American Samoa, wiping out entire villages and flattening tourist resorts.

The death toll currently stands at 146 with another 130 injured, but the figure is expected to rise with hundreds still missing.

Rescuers continued to pull bodies from the mud and rubble yesterday as the death toll climbed. A spotter aircraft circled the ocean looking for bodies, dropping smoke flares to pinpoint their location for a boat to collect.

Mr Green said he was checking "everyone on our radar" who was in Samoa when the tsunami hit.

He has been scouring hospitals on the main Samoan island of Upolu but said he had found no injured British tourists.

A two-year-old boy was missing presumed dead and his parents, who were believed to live in New Zealand and were visiting Samoa on holiday, are being looked after by the New Zealand High Commission and have refused to comment.

The boy's father is understood to have undergone treatment in a Samoan hospital.

A health ministry official said that some British passports had been found among the debris on the island's south coast, but it was not known if their owners had survived.

Less than 24 hours after the tsunami struck, tourists who were caught up in the chaos were starting to leave the island.

Air New Zealand sent one of its largest planes to Samoa to collect scores of holidaymakers who were desperate to return home following the tragedy.

Margaret Robinson, a British national from Oxford who now lives in New Zealand, left Samoa on the Air New Zealand flight on Thursday night. Speaking from the departure lounge at the airport, she said she was woken in terror by the earthquake, which lasted about three minutes.

Mrs Robinson, who was staying at a hotel in Apia at the time, said the 8.1 magnitude quake was "the worst I have ever experienced".

"It was quite prolonged, three minutes is an awfully long time for an earthquake to last. The ground was vibrating like in one of those fun fair rides when the floor wobbles," she said.

Mrs Robinson, 60, said friends of hers who were staying in the coastal town of Lolomatu had survived by sheltering in their car.

"They saw the water emptying out of the channel so they got into their car but it wouldn't start," she said. "They then managed to get it going, but the water was coming back in and they couldn't get away in time so they position the car with its boot to the wave and put on the handbrake.

"They were pushed six metres into a bush, but they were OK."

The majority of tsunami victims were being treated in Apia's National Hospital, where last night bodies of the dead were still being delivered.

"We've seen pickup trucks carrying the dead ... back to town," said Fotu Becerra, a tourist from New Zealand. "We were shocked when we saw the first one but after three hours, it seemed normal."

Authorities in neighbouring Tonga confirmed nine dead and officials feared whole towns on outlying islands had been destroyed.