John Metcalfe, a Liverpool man living in Thailand, survived the Boxing Day Tsunami 20 years ago, enduring harrowing injuries and a fight for life against overwhelming odds with the help of his dad

On 26 December 2004, Amber Owen, 28, from Milton Keynes, was on holiday in Phuket when a magnitude-9.1 earthquake struck under the sea in northern Indonesia. It claimed the lives of 230,000 people, but she taken to safety by elephant, Ningnong who she was riding at the time the first wave hit.

In Thailand, people gathered at a memorial ceremony in Ban Nam Khem, a small fishing village in Phang Nga province that bore the brunt of the devastating wave in the country. The tsunami claimed the lives of over 8,000 people in Thailand. Many remain missing and nearly 400 bodies are unclaimed to this day.

Sharon Howard has returned to Thailand to mark the 20th anniversary of losing her six-year-old son Taylor, his eight-year-old brother Mason and fiancé, David Page, 44

Luke Simon, who survived the devastated 2004 Boxing Day tsunami which killed his brother, has shared the haunting two words he heard moments before.

Boxing Day tsunami, forensic investigator Peter Baines wanted to create good from the enormity of loss. Twenty years on, he has raised $30 million for children orphaned by the disaster.

20 years later, one of the Matara train’s carriages sits outside the city’s Tsunami Museum as a haunting reminder of Boxing Day of 2004. The effects of the 9.3 Richter scale earthquake did not relent until eight hours later, when unaware swimmers off the coast of South Africa felt the force of the waves.

This Boxing Day marks the 20th anniversary of the catastrophic Indian Ocean tsunami, one of the deadliest natural disaste

I don’t wish ever a disaster of this magnitude on anyone,” one woman said. But the 2004 Asian tsunami also made her realize "there’s more to this world, and it’s about love.”

At one in Ulee Lheue village, where 14,000 unidentified victims are buried, families of those killed by the tsunami wept and placed flowers. There were similar memorial ceremonies in Ban Nam Khem, a small fishing town in Thailand that was among those most devastated by the tsunami in the country,

A 9.1 magnitude earthquake beneath the Indian Ocean on December 26 2004 triggered the tsunami which killed more than 200,000 people. The Prime Minister was among those paying tribute, saying his thoughts are with the “millions of people who were affected”.