VARIOUS: Commemoration around the Indian Ocean for the 230,000 people who died in the tsunami of December 26, 2004

Thousands of people around the Indian Ocean lit candles, visited mass graves and observed two minutes of silence on Tuesday (December 26), two years after a tsunami pulverised villages and killed or left missing about 230,000 people. A magnitude 9.1 earthquake ruptured the ocean floor off the tip of northern Sumatra, triggering waves that slammed into the coastlines of 12 nations at the speed of a train. In Thailand's Khao Lak, the southern coastal resort where most of that country's 5,395 victims died, students and foreigners gathered for memorials. Italian tourist Claudio Brodioli, who lost a friend to the tsunami, said it was good to come back for the memorials. "I am happy to be here. It's a nice thing that has happened here -- a remembrance ceremony to allow people to remember this thing and to hope that it doesn't ever happen again. It's a nice thing," said Brodioli. Indonesian government officials and officers visited cemeteries in Aceh, their worst-hit province, to pray and scatter petals on graves. Survivors and friends and families of victims also gathered to remember the dead. Around 169,000 people died in the province on December 26, 2004. Tens of thousands of people in Aceh still live in temporary homes. Two years after the disaster, Indian Ocean countries have installed expensive warning systems. But the identification process on some bodies is continuing amid calls from the United States and six other European nations to speed up the work and to probe an alleged misuse of donations to fund identification. Some countries are staging periodic evacuation drills to prepare for another such disaster. On the tourist island of Bali -- which was not affected by the 2004 tsunami -- around 15,000 people, most of them schoolchildren, took part in an evacuation drill. The authorities said the drill involved search and rescue teams, military, police and local officials and residents. It was aimed at informing local residents on the dangers of a tsunami and how to respond in the event of one hitting land. The drill featured training and escape routes and recognising warning signs. The principal mourner at Khao Lak was Thailand's Princess Ubolratna Rajkanya, whose 21-year-old son Poom Jensen died in the tsunami at the resort. She told the mourners: "I want everyone who has lost a beloved to accept the truth of the fate, accept that the disaster has happened and change our feeling of loss and our tears to become sacred water that gives us spirit and strength for our hope of better lives." Afterwards, the princess and others released 5,395 traditional lanterns into the sky, representing all those who died in Thailand.

ITN Source | December 26, 2006

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