Lots of people lose their lives in natural disasters and unnatural disasters. For example, we had the Indian Ocean Tsunami, the recent earthquake in China, the 9/11 attacks, deaths during wars, lots of other examples. Can any of this be explained in a religious sense?

I mean how can you explain such large scale, instant destruction of life? For instance, can one make the case that it was what God must've wanted? And in that case, is God cruel? Or would God have done that towards some better end? Or is it that God isn't a factor or plays a role in these large scale disasters?

Such natural disasters always affect people of all religions, all geographic locations. Certainly, these disasters don't discriminate between good human beings and bad human beings? From a non-religous point of view, we can just dismiss these as random events. But, can religion explain them?

Eastern philosophy sometimes uses Karma (cause and effect of human actions over multiple lives through constant reincarnation) to explain these events. Is there something similiar in Western religious philosophy? Either ways, is there any religious explanation that can answer this question satisfactorily?