Colin Powell, the outgoing US Secretary of State, said today that the devastation caused by the Indian Ocean tsunami was worse than anything he had seen throughout his military career.

The former Army general arrived today in the Indonesian province of Aceh, the area worst hit by the Asian earthquake, on the second day of his whistle-stop tour of the devastated region.

Survivors are staggering into Banda Aceh, the province's capital with horrific wounds from the force of the tsunami that smashed cars into upper storeys of buildings, and flipped ships onto beaches.

Nearly 94,000 Indonesians were killed and 500,000 have been displaced by the catastrophe, almost all of them in Aceh, a province of about four million people on the island of Sumatra that has been beset by a three-decade-old civil war.

Mr Powell, who took a helicopter tour over Banda Aceh, said that he has never seen anything like it. "I have been in war and I have been through a number of hurricanes, tornados and other relief operations, but I have never seen anything like this," he said.

"Flying over Banda Aceh and seeing how the wave came ashore pushing everything in its path - cars, ships, freighter overturned - all the way up to the foothills and then starting up the foothills until finally the waves came to a stop.

"I cannot begin to imagine the horror that went through families and all of the people who heard this noise coming and then had their lives snuffed out by this wave," he said.

Although portrayed as a fact-finding trip for President Bush - he is also accompanied by Mr Bush's brother Jeb, the Governor of Florida - the tour is a chance for Washington to build bridges with the world's Muslim community after the Iraq war.

"I think it does give to the Muslim world and the rest of the world an opportunity to see American generosity, American values in action," Mr Powell said yesterday after arriving in Indonesia, which has the world's largest Muslim population.

"And I hope as a result of our efforts, as a result of our helicopter pilots being seen by the citizens of Indonesia helping them, that value system of ours will be reinforced," he told a news conference in Jakarta.

Washington has pledged $350 million for the region and has launched a huge military operation to help the aid effort and reaction to the US initiative has been rapid and positive.

The Thai Foreign Minister, Surakiart Sathirathai, greeted the Americans in Bangkok yesterday, hailing the "prompt and very effective assistance". His Indonesian counterpart, Hassan Wirayuda, said that US help was "of great importance".

Even the UN relief co-ordinator, Jan Egeland, who ruffled feathers earlier this week with a reference to "stingy" rich nations, was satisfied. "The US could not have been more proactive or more active," he said yesterday.

Although other countries such as Sweden and Germany have topped the US aid pledge, the Americans were busy supplementing it with one of the largest military relief operations ever mounted by the Pentagon.

The effort featured an aircraft carrier group, an amphibious group, more than 40 helicopters, 20 supply and control aircraft and 12,000 personnel.

Mr Powell, who was to be one of the featured participants at an Asean-sponsored international conference on the tragedy in Jakarta tomorrow, insisted that foreign aid was linked to security.

"It dries up those pools of dissatisfaction which might give rise to terrorist activity," he said. "That supports not only our national security interest but the national security interests of the countries involved."

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