A 9.0-magnitude earthquake ruptured the Indian Ocean floor off northwestern Sumatra on 26 December 2004, sending walls of water up to 10 meters high crashing across coastlines stretching from Indonesia to East Africa. The quake was the strongest recorded anywhere on earth in four decades. Indonesia suffered the heaviest losses, with at least 166,760 confirmed dead; Sri Lanka counted more than 30,000 killed and India nearly 10,000, while Thailand lost 5,291, roughly half of them foreign tourists. The regional death toll crossed 220,000 by late January 2005.
The waves reached Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, Burma, Malaysia, the Maldives, Bangladesh, Kenya, Somalia, and Tanzania within hours. Sumatra's Aceh province, already scarred by decades of separatist conflict, saw entire villages erased. The World Health Organisation estimated five million people had been left without homes.
The United Nations described the relief operation as the largest in its nearly 60-year history. Public and private pledges surpassed $10.8 billion by mid-January, with Australia committing $764 million, Germany pledging 500 million euros, and Japan announcing $500 million alongside a deployment of 1,000 military personnel for relief work.
At an emergency Jakarta summit on 6 January, leaders from 26 nations backed a regional tsunami warning system for the Indian Ocean, expected to be operational within 12 to 18 months. The Paris Club of creditor nations extended an unconditional debt moratorium to Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the Seychelles to support reconstruction.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this AFP wire report, first published in January 2005, in its own words.