Prayers mark tsunami anniversary

Sri Lankan tsunami survivors pay tribute to a tsunami monument on the fifth anniversary (AP)
12 April 2012

Buddhist monks chanted on white-sand beaches in Thailand and thousands prayed at mosques in Indonesia to mark the fifth anniversary of the Asian tsunami that left 230,000 people dead.

The devastating tsunami struck a dozen countries around the Indian Ocean rim on December 26, 2004.

Its towering waves wiped out entire coastal communities, devastated families and crashed over tourist-filled beaches the morning after Christmas. Survivors waded through a horror show of corpse-filled waters.

In Thailand, hundreds of residents and foreigners returned to the beaches on the island of Phuket to recall one of the worst natural disasters of modern times.

A moment of silence was observed on Phuket's Patong Beach, a popular strip of hotels and restaurants, to mark the moment the tsunami struck.

Buddhist monks in bright orange robes chanted prayers. Onlookers wept and embraced.

Giorgio Capriccioli, an Italian who lives on Phuket, carried a bouquet of white flowers into the ocean.

"My wife would be dead if it weren't for the fact that she were pregnant and didn't go to work that day," he said at a ceremony that also attracted tourists, as well as Thai villagers.

The ceremonies on Phuket culminated in the evening with candle-lighting ceremonies and the release of hundreds of light-filled lanterns into the sky.

The tsunami was sparked by a 9.2-magnitude underwater earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra -- the mightiest earthquake in 40 years.

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