Some 14,000 people were Saturday confirmed missing in Sri Lanka after the tsunami disaster last Sunday and the country's official death toll is expected to jump to more than 42,000, the president's office said.

The number of people missing had substantially risen overnight from nearly 5,000 to 13,976, the office was quoted as saying.

"The bodies of the people missing are not yet found, so we cannot say that they are confirmed dead," an official with the unit stressed though.

President Chandrika Kumaratunga had on Thursday said that the death toll was set to jump as most of the missing people were likely to be declared dead "in the next few days."

The figure of dead in Sri Lanka now stands at some 28,500.

Relief workers were still discovering bodies from remote areas where they were unable to reach due to heavy destruction on roads.

Source: Xinhua