Memorial events have been held across the Indian Ocean to mark 20 years since the tsunami that killed more than 220,000. Also on the programme, China has approved controversial plans to build what will be the world's largest hydropower dam on the Tibetan plateau; and the promise of non-alcoholic wine. (Photo: People light candles during a memorial for the 20th anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami at a tsunami wave-shaped monument erected for the victims of the 2004 tsunami in Ban Nam Khem, a southern fishing village destroyed by the wave, in Phang Nga province, Thailand, December 26, 2024. REUTERS/Stringer)
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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 26, 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.