Indonesia and Thailand mark 20 years of devastating Boxing Day tsunami with sombre ceremonies
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One of modern history’s worst natural disasters killed over 228,000 people in 2004. Countries across Asia held ceremonies to remember hundreds of thousands of people killed during the massive Indian Ocean tsunami two decades ago. People gathered in prayer and visited mass graves in Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and India to mark 20 years since 228,000 people were killed in one of the worst natural disasters in modern history as 30m-high waves lashed about a dozen countries.
![[Family members chant next to photographs of tsunami victims in Thailand]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/26/11/11793624.jpg)
The tsunami was triggered by a powerful earthquake off the coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra on 26 December 2024, reaching as far as East Africa. Some 1.7 million people were displaced, mostly in the four worst-affected countries, but Indonesia recorded the most number of deaths at over 170,000.
![[Railway workers carried flowers to offer a monument built in memory of those killed during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in Sri Lanka]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/26/10/TSUNAMI-ANIVERSARIO-FOTOGALERIA_27316.jpg)
Today, many wept as they placed flowers at a mass grave in Ulee Lheue village, where over 14,000 unidentified tsunami victims are buried. It is one of several mass graves in Banda Aceh, the capital of Indonesia's northernmost province, which was one of the areas worst affected by the disaster.
Hundreds of people gathered to pray at the Baiturrahman mosque in downtown Banda Aceh as sirens sounded in the city for three minutes to mark the time of the earthquake. "We miss them and we still do not know where they are. All we know is that every year we visit the mass graves in Ulee Lheue and Siron," Muhamad Amirudin, who lost two of his children and has never found their bodies, told the Associated Press.
