Third Tsunami anniversary is being observed as National Safety Day in Sri Lanka Wednesday.
The main commemorative function is being held at Ratnapura in southern Sri Lanka.
A special prayer meeting is also being held at Peraliya, south of Colombo where more than 1000 passengers were killed as their train was washed away by the giant waves three years ago, All India Radio reported.
The whole of the island nation went into silent prayers for three minutes in the morning as mark of respect to those who perished in tsunami.
The nature's fury had killed more about 40,000 people besides displacing 2.5 million in Sri Lanka, the worst affected country after Indonesia.
India was the first country to have rushed to help Sri Lanka when Tsunami hit the island.
Besides pledging dlrs 23 million as Tsunami relief, New Delhi had dispatched ship loads of food and relief materials to the Tsunami hit regions.
More than 1000 military and medical personnel from India worked day in and day out to help Sri Lanka recover from the tsunami shock.
In Indonesia Mass prayers as well as a major emergency Tsunami drill are being held in coastal Calang town in Aceh, province.
Archipelagic Indonesia was the nation worst hit by the earthquake- triggered tsunami, with some 168,000 lives claimed by the catastrophic walls of water that lashed Aceh province at the northern tip of Sumatra island.
The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake was an undersea earthquake that occurred on December 26, 2004, with an epicenter off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. The earthquake triggered a series of devastating Tsunamis along the coasts of most landmasses bordering the Indian Ocean, killing more than 225,000 people in eleven countries, and inundating coastal communities with waves up to 30 meters (100 feet).
This was the ninth-deadliest natural disaster in modern history.
Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, and Myanmar were hardest hit.
With a magnitude of between 9.1 and 9.3, it is the second largest earthquake ever recorded on a seismograph.
This earthquake had the longest duration of faulting ever observed, between 8.3 and 10 minutes. It caused the entire planet to vibrate as much as 1 cm (0.5 inches) and triggered other earthquakes as far away as Alaska.
A Tsunami is a series of waves created when a body of water, such as an ocean, is rapidly displaced.
Earthquakes, mass movements above or below water, volcanic eruptions and other underwater explosions, landslides,underwater earthquakes, large meteoroid or asteroid impacts and testing with nuclear weapons at sea all have the potential to generate a tsunami.
The effects of a tsunami can range from unnoticeable to devastating.
