Survivors of Asia's 2004 tsunami and relatives of its 226,000 victims cried and prayed as they gathered along Indian Ocean shorelines on Friday, Dec 26 for memorials to mark the 10th anniversary of a disaster that still leaves an indelible mark on the region, Reuters reports.

When a 9.15-magnitude quake opened a faultline deep beneath the ocean on Dec 26 a decade ago, it triggered a wave as high as 17.4 meters (57 feet) which crashed ashore in more than a dozen countries, wiping some communities off the map in seconds.

Hundreds gathered in Indonesia's Aceh province, many bursting into tears as poems and songs were heard and a montage was screened showing the devastation from a disaster that killed 126,741 people in Aceh alone.

Mass prayers were held late on Thursday at Banda Aceh's Grand Mosque, one of few buildings that withstood the wave.

Crowds also gathered and laid wreaths at Thailand's tsunami memorial park in Ban Nam Khem, a southern fishing village decimated by the wave.

Some 5,395 people were killed in Thailand, among them about 2,000 foreign tourists. Almost 3,000 people remain missing.

Eighty percent of Thailand's victims were killed in the province of Phang Nga, where experts from 39 nations quickly gathered to identify bodies in what became the world's biggest international forensics investigation. About 700 people carrying flowers and banners marched from the beach where the wave smashed against India's southern Tamil Nadu coast to a black granite memorial, stopping by a Christian shrine to pray for the dead. An inter-faith ceremony was held for the 6,000 who died in Tamil Nadu, featuring Christian hymns and verses read from the Koran and Hindu texts.