Malaysia will send 1,000 national service trainees to tsunami-hit areas including Indonesia's Aceh province to help with relief operations, a report said on Sunday.

Up to 500 youths from Malaysia's non-military national service programme would set up an Aceh relief centre using 2,000 tents that could house about 15,000 people displaced by the disaster, an official was quoted as saying in the Star newspaper.

National Service Training Camp Operators Association president Kamal Amir Hijaz said the trainees would be selected from the thousands that were drafted last year.

Other trainees would help in cleaning the beaches, villages and houses in Kuala Muda and Langkawi in Malaysia's northern Kedah state as well as the state of Perlis, another national service official said in the report.

Kedah was reported to have suffered the most damage to infrastructure, with damage worth about RM21 million.

While Malaysia lies closer to the epicentre of the earthquake than many countries harder hit, it was protected from the full force of the waves by Indonesia's Sumatra island.

A total of 68 people died in Malaysia, mostly in the northern resort island of Penang.