Memorials have been held for the victims of the tsunami that hit the Indian Ocean area, killing greater than 200,000 individuals in one in all trendy historical past’s worst pure disasters.

On December 26, 2004, a magnitude-9.1 earthquake off Indonesia’s western tip generated a sequence of huge waves that pummelled the shoreline of 14 international locations from Indonesia to Somalia.

In Indonesia’s Aceh province, the place greater than 100,000 individuals have been killed, a siren rang out on the Baiturrahman Grand Mosque to kick off a sequence of memorials across the area, together with Sri Lanka, India and Thailand, which the tsunami hit hours later.

“I believed it was doomsday,” mentioned Hasnawati, a 54-year-old instructor who goes by one identify, on the Indonesian mosque which was broken by the tsunami.

“On a Sunday morning, when our household have been all laughing collectively, out of the blue catastrophe struck and every part was gone. I can’t describe it with phrases.”

Some mourners sat and cried at Aceh’s Ulee Lheue mass grave, the place about 14,000 are buried, whereas some villages held their very own prayers across the province as they remembered the tragedy that devastated complete communities.

Indonesians will later go to a bigger mass grave and maintain a communal prayer within the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, whereas beachside memorials and non secular ceremonies have been beginning in Sri Lanka, India and Thailand, a number of the worst-hit international locations.

A complete of 226,408 individuals died on account of the tsunami, in response to EM-DAT, a recognised world catastrophe database.

There was no warning of the upcoming tsunami, giving little time for evacuation, regardless of the hours-long gaps between the waves hanging completely different continents.

However as we speak a classy community of monitoring stations has lower down warning occasions.

Indonesia suffered the very best dying toll, with greater than 160,000 individuals killed alongside its western coast.

In Sri Lanka, the place greater than 35,000 individuals perished, survivors and family have been to collect to recollect about 1,000 victims who died when waves derailed a passenger prepare.

The mourners will board the restored Ocean Queen Specific and head to Peraliya – the precise spot the place it was ripped from the tracks, some 90km (56 miles) south of Colombo.

Almost 300 individuals have been killed as distant as Somalia, in addition to greater than 100 within the Maldives and dozens in Malaysia and Myanmar.