Western tourists who survived the disaster were among those grieving in Thailand for family and friends who did not. In India, children dressed in white marched down a street where thousands were washed away.
Flags were to be lowered to half staff in Sri Lanka while bells were to sound in churches, mosques and temples. Hundreds in India were to walk silently to a mass burial ground. In Thailand, thousands of floating lanterns were to be floated to sea.
On Monday, the hardest-hit countries planned official ceremonies and a minute of silence to commemorate the day that a magnitude-9 earthquake ripped apart the ocean floor off Indonesia’s coast and sent 30-foot-high waves crashing onto shores in a dozen countries around the Indian Ocean, leaving at least 216,000 people dead or missing.
