(Recasts with Taiwan earthquakes)

By Ahmad Pathoni

ULEE LHEUE, Indonesia, Dec 26 (Reuters) - Two powerful earthquakes off Taiwan triggered a regional tsunami alert on Tuesday as thousands lit candles and visited mass graves to mark the second anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami.

On Dec. 26, 2004, giant waves triggered by one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded pulverised villages along Indian Ocean shores, killing or leaving missing about 230,000 people.

Hours after ceremonies in which thousands across the region stood in silence for two minutes, earthquakes measuring 7.1 and 7.0 magnitude hit southern Taiwan, prompting a tsunami alert for the Philippines.

This was later lifted and there were no reports of major damage in Taiwan, southern China or Hong Kong.

But the jitters underscored the fear of tsunamis across Asia and beyond.

At a mosque in Ulee Lheue, Aceh, the Indonesian province worst hit by monster waves in 2004 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 9.15 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 U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush visited the town and helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in rebuilding projects.

FLEEING CONFLICT

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 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.

In the south India fishing village of Keechankuppam, where more than 600 people died, people gathered to pray at a memorial stone shaped like a flower bud.

"They are somewhere here, watching my tears and these flowers, my young wife and little daughter," said Ramachandran Velayudhan, 46, before breaking down.

"I could not save them despite trying hard and I can never forgive myself for that. I should have died with them."

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.

In the nearby town of Bang Muang, Buddhist monks, Catholic priests and Muslim clerics officiated at the opening of Anonymous Cemetery, where 409 tsunami victims who have not been identified were buried.

TSUNAMI DRILLS

Indian Ocean countries have installed expensive warning systems and are staging periodic evacuation drills to prepare better for another such disaster.

But for tsunami survivors, the day was about looking back, not worrying about the future.

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 green grass now covers the bare earth that scarred the land just after the burials. (Additional reporting by Sanjeev Miglani in Colombo, Chaiwat Subprasom in Khao Lak, R. Bhagwan Singh in Chennai, Sanjib Kumar Roy in Port Blair and Doug Young in Taipei)

AlertNet news is provided by

Delicio.us  |   Digg  |   NewsVine  |   Reddit                                                                                  Permalink