BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (AP) - Grieving relatives gathered on beaches and at mass graves Sunday to remember the 216,000 killed or missing one year after a mammoth earthquake unleashed a tsunami that crashed into coastlines from Asia to Africa. Western tourists who survived the disaster were among those grieving in Thailand for family and friends who did not. In India, children dressed in white marched down a street where thousands were washed away.
And people in hardest-hit Indonesia flocked to one of the disaster's most horrific sites—a grave that holds almost 47,000 bodies, dumped three-deep in pits that were hastily dug in the days that followed the Dec. 26 tsunami.
"After I come here, I somehow feel satisfied," said Dasniati, who traveled 15 hours to lay petals on the field Sunday where she believes her 10-year-old daughter is buried. "I pray that Allah accepts her at his side."
On Monday, exactly one year after the magnitude-9 earthquake ripped apart the ocean floor off Indonesia's coast and sent 33-foot-high waves crashing to shore, the countries hit were preparing to mark the sad anniversary with official ceremonies and a minute of silence.
Monuments were being erected, beaches scoured and security tightened—making for a somber Christmas in some of the 12 coutries affected.
In a solemn private ceremony, Sigi Gsteu, of Feldkirch, Austria, wiped away tears as he remembered 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, placing two simple wooden plaques engraved with his friends' names beneath a lone pine tree where the resort once stood.
This is my "chance to say goodbye," he said.
Overnight, at one Catholic midnight Mass in a hotel on Thailand's Patong beach, the priest urged attendees to "remember all those who lost their lives in the tsunami." Outside, revelers partied with bar staff dressed in Christmas hats in the beach's notorious nightclub district.
In India, more than 300 people attended an interfaith service of Hindu, Christian and Muslim prayers on Sunday before joining a march led by children dressed in white through Nagapattinam, where thousands were washed away.
"Our purpose is to express solidarity with the survivors and pledge ourselves to rebuild Nagapattinam," said S. P. Rajendran, secretary of the town's Chamber of Commerce and an organizer of the march.
At least 216,000 people were killed or disappeared in the waves, according to an assessment by The Associated Press of government and credible relief agency figures for each country hit. The United Nations puts the number at at least 223,000.
The true toll will probably never be known—many bodies were lost at sea and in some cases the populations of places struck were not accurately recorded.
In the lead-up to the anniversary, survivors and officials were taking stock of the relief operation and peace drives in Sri Lanka and Aceh, the two areas hardest hit. Success has been mixed.
Almost 400,000 houses were reduced to rubble and more than 2 million people left homeless, the U.N. says.
Rebuilding, funded by massive aid donations, has started but many refugee camps remain full and many agencies worry that the pace of reconstruction in too slow.
In Aceh, the tsunami resulted in a cease-fire between the government and guerillas that has ended a decades-old separatist conflict.
No such progress was made in Sri Lanka, where disputes over tsunami aid and an upsurge in violence have dashed hopes for an end to the longrunning conflict there. In the latest violence, unidentified gunmen shot and killed a pro-rebel legislator as he attended midnight Mass at a church in the country's east, the Defense Ministry said.
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Associated Press reporters Meraiah Foley and Alisa Tang in Thailand, Dilip Ganguly in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and Ashok Sharma in Nagapattinam, India, contributed to this report.
