A British toddler is feared to be among at least 100 people killed by a tsunami which struck the South Pacific islands of Samoa and American Samoa.

Villages and holiday resorts were completely washed away after waves up to 15 feet high, triggered by an earthquake with a magnitude of 8.1, swept ashore on the islands, killing scores of locals and visitors — including Australian and New Zealand tourists.

An earthquake struck deep below the ocean off the coast of Samoa at 6:48 am local time (1748 GMT on Tuesday). Within minutes of the tremor, powerful waves engulfed tourist resorts on the southern islands before spreading throughout the region.

Dr Stephen Rogers, the British honorary consul in Samoa, said that a two-year-old Briton was reported missing after the tsunami. The child is believed to have been on a beach when the giant waves struck and was thought to have been swept out to sea.

Times Archive, 1877: The tidal wave in the Pacific

The sea in some places is stated to have risen by 60 feet. Between 600 and 800 lives are said to have been lost

• The great Hawaiian tidal wave

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A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: “We can confirm a British national is missing, presumed dead, after the Samoan tsunami.”

President Barack Obama declared a major disaster in American Samoa, a US territory, and ordered federal aid to help recovery efforts, with a US military transport aircraft due to leave Honolulu for the South Pacific islands today.

The death toll has continued to climb since the waves struck the islands. Tonga, American Samoa and Samoa have so far confirmed the deaths of 99 people, that figure was expected to rise in the coming hours.

Eyewitnesses recalled that about 20 minutes after the massive earthquake rocked the Samoan capital of Apia, towering waves hit the southern coast of the Upolo island where many of the holiday resorts are located. Tourists — including visiting Britons — fled to the hills to escape the tsunami wave, which reached up to a mile inland.

A local who works at the Ili Ili resort on the south coast of Upolo described the horror of watching the water recede to the horizon before the enormous wave crashed ashore just after dawn.

“We had just finished sweeping and we looked out to sea and there was nothing, no water, there was only coral,” the resort worker told The Times.

“Then after about five minutes we saw the big wave coming and I said: ‘We have to flee’. So we left in the car and we could see the wave — which was about 3m (10ft) high — coming closer. We were driving down the main road and we could see the wave.”

He said that there was nothing left of their resort. “We don’t have a resort anymore. Every single thing has gone. The boat, the bungalows, the restaurant … it is gone.”

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