Silence, tears as Asia remembers 2004 tsunami

ULEE LHEUE, Indonesia, Dec 26 (Reuters) Thousands lit candles, visited mass graves and observed two minutes of silence today two years after a tsunami pulverised villages along Indian Ocean shores and killed or left missing about 230,000 people.

At a mosque in Ulee Lheue, Aceh, the Indonesian province worst hit by monster waves that came rolling out of the sea on a bright Sunday morning, 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 sermon some religious leaders preached after a disaster that killed or left missing 169,000 people in northern Sumatra. Half a million were also made homeless.

The seaside mosque in Ulee Lheue became an icon of one of history's worst natural disasters.

It was the only building left standing after a magnitude 9.1 earthquake ruptured the ocean floor off the tip of northern Sumatra, triggering waves that slammed into the coastlines of a dozen Indian Ocean nations at the speed of a freight train.

Former US Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush visited the town and helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in rebuilding projects.

FLEEING CONFLICT NOW In stark 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.

''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-struck areas of the Indian Ocean rim, Sri Lankans observed two minutes of silence and lit candles at the time the tsunami struck.

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