Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service coming live from London.

This is Owen Bennett Jones.

Now on the morning of December the 26th, 2004, there was an undersea earthquake off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia,

and over seven hours a tsunami, a series of immense waves

triggered by the earthquake, rippled out across the Indian Ocean, devastating coastal areas

as far away as East Africa. Some locations reported the wave reached nine metres when it

hit the shore.

There are several hundred bodies here piled up by the side of the road on a patch of grass.

They're just lying, most of them, in the intense heat of the sun.

Some relatives are going across the rows of bodies trying to look for missing loved ones. Two of my children were swept away from my hands.

My other three children and my husband are still missing.

I'm afraid I'll die now.

I don't know how I can go on living here.

Nobody knows that the waves will come.

They should warn the people, but the people go to the beach, and then the waves come, nobody was prepared.

As the water gassed through, it filled the room with water, and I was almost drowned,

and I just stood there and prayed.

And then, fortunately, the water was so force forceful it blew the other window out.

And of course then the water went down and saved my life.

I've come to an impromptu morgue. There's an 11-year-old girl who's just been screaming

hysterically for some time,

having just recognised her mother.

...