Over four days, coroner Alison Thompson will hear from a number of expert witnesses as well as police officers who helped to identify the British victims of the December 26 catastrophe.

At least 141 Britons, mainly holidaymakers, were among the 217,000 killed when tidal waves triggered by an undersea earthquake struck the coasts of Thailand, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, the Maldives and other countries.

However, the inquest -- at the cavernous Olympia Exhibition Centre -- will deal only with the 93 British citizens whose bodies were repatriated by air to a morgue in Fulham, west London.

Police are still working to identify formally the bodies of six of the other 48 Britons who died. The remainder have either been buried or cremated in the countries where they died, or in other places abroad.

The mass inquest will open Monday morning with an address from the coroner. She is expected to give a general introduction to the proceedings and explain the purposes of an inquest hearing.

Expert witnesses, including geophysicist Tim Henstock, a respected expert on undersea temblors, are then expected to speak about what caused the tsunami and its impact on southeast and south Asia.

Detective Chief Superintendent Nick Bracken, the senior identification expert at London's Metropolitan Police, is also due to discuss the forensic processes used to identify the British victims.

On Monday afternoon individual inquests will begin, starting with the victims who died in Sri Lanka. Each hearing will confirm the identity of the deceased and record when, where and how they died.

The inquests will not examine whether anyone was at fault for their deaths.

Coroners in Britain have the power to hold inquests whenever a British national is repatriated after dying overseas from unnatural causes.

The tsunami triggered a remarkable outpouring of public sympathy in Britain, with the Disasters Emergency Committee, which coordinated the aid appeal, raising a record 400 million pounds (593 million euros, 693 million dollars).

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