Asia Remembers Tsunami Victims

Thousands of people lit candles and observed two minutes' silence today to mark the second anniversary of the Boxing Day tsunami which devastated communities around the Indian Ocean, killing 230,000 people.

At a mosque in Ulee Lheue, Aceh, the Indonesian province hit hardest by the disaster, the imam Usman Dodi told worshippers the tsunami was a religious warning.

"Please forgive the people who have left us for their wrongdoing," the imam prayed, returning to a theme taken up by some religious leaders after the disaster that killed or left missing 169,000 people in northern Sumatra. Half a million were made homeless.

The seaside mosque in Ulee Lheue was the only building left standing after a magnitude 9.1 earthquake off the tip of northern Sumatra caused gigantic waves that hit the coastlines of a dozen countries around the Indian Ocean.

At a mass grave in the Ulee Lheue area, one of many such sites in Aceh where the scope of the disaster made individual burials impractical, Muria Yahya, 68, who lost two children and five grandchildren, prayed.

"I pray for my family, that they will be given the right place in the hereafter," Yahya told Reuters as she stood at the grave, where grass now covers the bare earth that was exposed by the tsunami.

In contrast to Aceh, where the disaster led to a landmark peace settlement of a three-decade insurgency, commemorations in rebel-held areas of Sri Lanka were muted.

A resurgence in Sri Lanka's two-decade civil war has forced thousands of Tamils, including tsunami survivors, to flee homes and camps for the second time in two years.

"There isn't much to show for by way of reconstruction. There isn't much to commemorate when you have barely moved an inch," said a western aid official involved in the tsunami relief operation.

"The tsunami could have been a turning point in the conflict, if both parties had agreed on an aid-sharing pact. Instead, it has now become another point of division."

Church and temple bells rang across much of Sri Lanka's south, where reconstruction is almost complete. Like other tsunami-hit areas, Sri Lankans observed two minutes' silence and lit candles. Some 35,000 people died in Sri Lanka.

The country also marked the anniversary of the tsunami by inaugurating the first of 100 coastal warning towers, in the southern town of Hikkaduwa, a centre of the country's beach tourism industry.

In Khao Lak, the southern coastal resort where most of Thailand's 5,395 victims died, students and foreigners gathered near a police patrol boat swept ashore two years ago to remember loved ones.

A huge relief effort followed the devastation of the 2004 tsunami. The charity Christian Aid, for example, has so far built more than 20,000 permanent homes and helped more than 185,000 people return to work.

The agency helped 290,000 people this year and has spent more than £29m in India, Indonesia and Sri Lanka on water, food, medicines, housing and training. Another £13m will be spent by the end of 2007.