Services recall tsunami victims

PHUKET, Thailand - Buddhist monks in orange robes chanted on a Thai beach, an Indonesian mother mourned her children at a mass grave, and a man scattered flowers in now-placid waters to commemorate the 230,000 killed five years ago when a tsunami ripped across Asia.

An outpouring of aid that followed the Dec. 26, 2004, tsunami has helped replace homes, schools, and entire coastal communities decimated by the disaster. But at yesterday's ceremonies, survivors spoke of the enduring wounds.

Thousands in Indonesia's Aceh province, the hardest hit, held prayer services at mosques and beside mass graves where tens of thousands were buried. The 167,000 people who died in Indonesia accounted for more than half the tsunami's death toll.

Among them were relatives of Siti Amridar, 48, who wept yesterday at a mass grave in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital. She was a mother of five until the tsunami claimed four of her children and her parents and washed away their village.

"I don't know where my children have been buried, or my parents. They have never been found," she said, sobbing. "I still can't believe the tsunami destroyed my life and my family in just a few minutes."

The disaster's epicenter was off the coast of Aceh, on the island of Sumatra, where a 9.2-magnitude earthquake struck underwater. The quake toppled homes and buildings and sent panicked communities rushing into the streets.

About 20 minutes later, a wall of water up to six stories high surged in from the sea. Traveling at jetliner speed, it carried with it toppled trees, crumpled cars, and refrigerators. The wave sent people scrambling up the sides of buildings and in search of higher ground.

On yesterday's anniversary, Indonesian villagers briefly panicked when another strong quake struck deep under the sea off the eastern coast, officials said. Residents in Saumlaki, about 1,680 miles east of the capital of Jakarta, said the magnitude-6.0 quake cut electricity, but there were no reports of damage or injuries.

Indonesia sits above a series of fault lines that make the vast island nation one of the most earthquake-prone places in the world. This year, a 7.6-magnitude quake struck off West Sumatra on Sept. 30, killing hundreds of people.

In Thailand yesterday, hundreds of residents and foreigners returned to the white-sand beaches on the southern island of Phuket. More than 8,000 people were killed along Thailand's shores.

A moment of silence was observed on Patong Beach, a popular strip of hotels and restaurants, where the waves had crashed over throngs of tourists. Buddhist monks chanted prayers. Onlookers wept and embraced.

Giorgio Capriccioli, an Italian living on Phuket, carried a bouquet into the ocean. He waded knee-deep in water that five years ago was clogged with corpses and cast the white flowers adrift to honor the memory of two friends.

His wife owns several beachfront shops but decided not to go to work the morning the tsunami struck.

"My wife would be dead if it weren't for the fact that she was pregnant and didn't go to work that day," he said.

The commemorations on Phuket culminated in the evening with the release of hundreds of light-filled lanterns into the sky.

Traffic across Sri Lanka came to a standstill as people around the country observed two minutes of silence for the 35,000 people who died there.

A ceremony was held at the southern coastal village of Peraliya, where the waves mangled a passing train, killing hundreds of passengers. At the site of the wreckage, relatives of the dead lit candles and placed flowers where a monument now stands.