ASIA:Hundreds of Indonesians prayed at mass graves in Aceh province yesterday, while in Thailand Buddhist monks held a ceremony to remember the many thousands who died in the Indian Ocean tsunami three years ago.
On December 26th, 2004, giant waves, triggered by one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded, pulverised villages along Indian Ocean shores, killing or leaving missing about 230,000 people.
Aceh, on the northwestern tip of Indonesia's Sumatra island, suffered the most, with about 170,000 dead or missing and billions of dollars in losses.
"We pray for the victims that God may accept their good deeds," said Kamal Usman, a survivor in Calang, an area in western Aceh where hundreds of officials and residents prayed at a ceremony to mark the anniversary.
Elsewhere in Indonesia, thousands of factory workers and villagers scrambled to higher ground as sirens blared in a drill.
In Ciwandan on Java's northwestern coast, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono watched the drill to test a tsunami early warning system.
"We hope through this exercise people begin to understand that they live in a tsunami-prone area and know what to do in case of an emergency," said Ami Pramitasari of the research and technology ministry.
Since the tsunami, Indian Ocean countries have installed expensive warning systems and staged periodic evacuation drills.
At Phuket in Thailand, locals and foreigners gathered for a blessing ceremony on the island led by maroon-robed Buddhist monks.
In the evening, mourners gathered on the beach at Khao Lak to the north of Phuket to release hundreds of lantern balloons into the night sky to commemorate the souls of the departed.
More than 2,000 holidaymakers, many of them from Europe, died at Khao Lak as giant waves smashed into luxury hotels. The disaster killed or left missing nearly 5,400 people in Thailand.
Commemorations were low key in Sri Lanka, where the tsunami battered about two-thirds of the island's shoreline and left 35,000 people dead or missing.
India distributed its first permanent shelters to 200 families who lost their homes in the tsunami in the remote Andaman and Nicobar islands on Wednesday, under a rehabilitation plan marked by delays.
Nearly 42,000 people, or close to 10,000 families, were rendered homeless by the waves that struck the archipelago off India's eastern coast.
More than 3,500 people were killed on the islands and nearly 9,000 people were killed on the mainland, mostly in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.
Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, head of BRR, the agency charged with rebuilding the Indonesian regions hit by the tsunami, said more than 100,000 homes had been rebuilt in Aceh and another 20,000 were due to be completed by June next year.