By Huang Xingwei and Liu Jieqiu

    APIA, Samoa, Oct. 6 (Xinhua) -- Less than three hours after the tsunami struck the southern coast of Samoa's main island of Upolu at 07:20 a.m. Sept. 29 local time, Tupuola Terry Tavita arrived at the village of Malelea, among the first people to get there.

    "The whole area looked like those devastating television images of Aceh, Indonesia after the 2006 Boxing Day tsunami," Tupuola, editor of Samoa's Savali newspaper, told Xinhua on Monday.

    Lalomanu, one of the most beautiful villages in the South Pacific island country, was simply reduced to a brown swamp.

    The confirmed death toll from last week's tsunami in the south Pacific rose to 183 as of Monday.

    Samoa's Disaster Management Office said that among the confirmed dead, 142 were in Samoa, 32 in American Samoa and nine in Tonga. Seven people were still missing in Samoa, presumed dead.

    In Samoa, the majority of deaths were at Lalomanu and Saleagagain the southeastern coast of Upolu mainland. A total of 310 people were injured in Samoa.

    A mass memorial and funeral service for the dead will be held on Thursday afternoon in Samoa.

    Overseas emergency assistance has poured in and relief work was underway.

    The villages in the disaster-hit areas have received clothing, tents, sheets, food and drinking water, though the drinking water is not enough.

    Some of the villagers who lost their family members were very quiet and motionless.

    To Mathew Andrew, director of an Australian volunteer disaster response team, the villagers were in a "dangerous stage."

    "They were in depression and despair, haunted by the nightmare of tsunami," Andrew told Xinhua on Monday.

    "We hoped to use our expertise to have one-to-one communication with them, release their sorrow, help them to forget the past and go back to normal life as early as possible," he said.

    "But it takes time," Andrew said, adding that the villagers in the disaster-hit areas who have escaped to higher ground in inland, were still too scared to go back to their villages.

    He noted a little boy, who saw his family members washed away by tsunami, first agreed to go back to his village near the sea. But the boy immediately ran back to high ground when he saw the sea again, haunted by the nightmare of tsunami.

    "Compare to the reconstruction of the houses, the mental and physiological recovery for those people who lost family members in the tsunami would be far more difficult," Andrew said.