BANDA ACEH, Indonesia -- Parents prayed at mass graves for children swept away by last year's tsunami, and Western tourists returned to palm-fringed beaches to lay wreaths for lost friends. There was a minute of silence in Indonesia today to mark the moment the first tsunami waves struck the country's coastline.
The low-key ceremonies came as the region formally marked the anniversary of the killer 30-foot-high waves that crashed ashore in a dozen countries around the Indian Ocean a year ago today, leaving at least 216,000 people dead or missing.
"After I come here, I somehow feel satisfied," said Dasniati, a mother who traveled 15 hours to lay petals on a grave that holds the remains of 47,000 victims of the devastation in Indonesia's Aceh province.
Though she has no way of knowing for sure, she thinks her 10-year-old daughter was among those whose bodies were dumped in the pit in the days after the tsunami. "I pray that Allah accepts her at his side," Dasniati, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, said Sunday.
Flags were to be lowered to half-staff in Sri Lanka while bells were to sound today in churches, mosques and temples. Hundreds in India were to walk silently to a mass burial ground. In Thailand, thousands of floating lanterns were to be floated to sea.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono -- on a stage overlooking tranquil blue waters that belied the fury unleashed one year ago -- set off a siren to mark the moment the first waves struck after the magnitude-9 earthquake. Similar commemorations were planned in Thailand and Sri Lanka at the moments the waves hit those countries.
Sigi Gsteu of Feldkirch, Austria, wiped away tears as he told of three close friends who died when the torrents flooded their Thai resort bungalow.
"When a person is missing and you don't have (a body), you cannot say goodbye," he said as he set two simple wooden plaques engraved with his friends' names beneath a lone pine tree where the resort once stood.
At a Christmas Eve service in a hotel on Thailand's Patong beach, a Roman Catholic priest urged worshippers to "remember all those who lost their lives in the tsunami."
Not everyone was thinking of the past, though. Holiday revelers partied with bar staff dressed in Christmas hats in Patong's notorious nightclub district.
After attending Christmas ceremonies on earthquake-shattered Nias island, President Yudhoyono and his wife, Ani, wept as they hugged children at a home for more than 200 tsunami orphans in the Sumatran city of Medan.
In India, more than 300 people attended an interfaith service of Hindu, Christian and Muslim prayers Sunday before joining a march led by children dressed in white through Nagapattinam, where thousands of people were washed away.
At least 216,000 people died or disappeared in the waves, according to an Associated Press assessment of government and credible relief agency figures. The United Nations estimates the number at 223,000.
The tsunami generated one of the most generous outpourings of foreign aid ever known, more money than could be spent in one year. Some $13 billion was pledged to relief and recovery efforts, of which 75 percent already has been secured, the United Nations says.
While local economies are recovering, 80 percent of the 1.8 million people displaced by the disaster still live in tents, plywood barracks or the homes of family and friends, according to the aid group Oxfam International.
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