Prayers mark tsunami anniversary

Thousands gathered for a blessing ceremony on Saturday in Thailand's Phuket island and Ban Nam Khem village to remember those who were killed in the 2004 tsunami. At the small fishing village of Ban Nam Khem in Phang Nga, thousands of villagers flocked to a wave-shape monument to remember the thousands victims the village lost. The mourners lay flowers and wreaths at a monument where pictures and names of victims were placed on the wall. The deadly waves killed more than 5,000 people on Thailand's Andaman Sea coast on Boxing Day five years ago. Buddhist, Muslim, and Christian ceremonies were held to pay tribute to the souls of the victims.The crowds also offered alms to monks with the belief that the offering would be food for the deceased. Five years on, many survivors are still living with the tragedy of losing their loved-ones. Ban Nam Khem village is a shadow of its former self. Its once-thriving centre of dense waterfront stores, restaurants and wooden homes is gone, replaced with souvenir shops, a wave-shaped monument and a small building filled with photographs of the tsunami recovery effort.In Patong, a Thai beach resort village on Phuket island, Buddhist monks chanted and tourist gathered for a ceremony at Loma Park.The crowd observed a minute of silence before the saffron-robed Buddhist monks prayed for the souls of the victims. The locals offered food to monks as part of merit making for their loved ones who died when the giant waves swept Thailand's Andaman Sea coast, in which 8,212 people were killed or reported missing.Many survivors returned to Phuket after the tsunami to remember the day and count their blessings. A couple of German survivors remembered the day by laying white roses on the turquoise sea in memory of the dead. Almost all of those killed were vacationing on or around the southern island of Phuket, a region that had contributed as much as 40 percent of Thailand's annual tourism income.An estimated 2,200 foreign tourists perished in the waves.In December 2004, a magnitude 9.15 quake off the coast of Indonesia's Aceh province triggered an Indian Ocean tsunami that killed around 226,000 people in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and nine other countries. Five years later, the United Nations has warned governments in Asia's most catastrophe-prone areas they should set aside one-tenth of their development funds to limit the risk of disaster.