Ani Naqvi remembers the Boxing Day tsunami 20 years ago not just as the day when she nearly lost her life but one that gave her new purpose. She had just turned 33 and was visiting a friend in the Sri Lankan surfing village of Arugam Bay on 26 December 2004 when one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded struck off the coast of Indonesia,

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

A father who saved his family during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami has recalled how he "missed death five times on that day". Duncan Ridgley, from Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, had emigrated to Sri Lanka with his three children and then wife, arriving in the country on Christmas Eve.

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

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.

A woman who was able to survive the Boxing Day tsunami in Thailand 20 years ago unharmed, aged eight, because of an elephant said "it makes you grateful for everything that's happened to you". On 26004,

Buildings completely destroyed, piles of rubble, boats in places they shouldn't naturally have been, dead bodies everywhere…'