Strongest earthquake hits Asia

More than 12,300 people were killed and tens of thousands left homeless after a powerful undersea earthquake unleashed giant tsunami waves that crashed into the coasts of south and southeast Asia. The 8.9 magnitude earthquake that struck off the Indonesian island of Sumatra early on Sunday was the biggest in 40 years.

It triggered waves that reared up into walls of water as high as 10 meters (30 feet) as they hit coastlines in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand.

In Indonesia, an archipelago of 17,000 islands, one official said nearly 4,500 people had died. The worst affected area was Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh province, where 3,000 were killed ... in Sri Lanka, the death toll also reached 4,500 and 1 million people, or 5 percent of its population, were affected.

The earthquake, of magnitude 8.9 as measured by the U.S. Geological Survey, struck at 7:59 a.m. (1959 EST). It was the world's biggest since 1964, said Julie Martinez at the USGS.

The tsunami was so powerful it smashed boats and flooded areas along the east African coast, 3,728 miles away ...

A tsunami, a Japanese word that translates as "harbor wave," is usually caused by a sudden rise or fall of part of the earth's crust under or near the ocean. It is not a single wave, but a series of waves that can travel across the ocean at speeds of more than 500 miles an hour. As the tsunami enters the shallows of coastlines in its path, its velocity slows but its height increases. A tsunami that is just a few centimeters or meters high from trough to crest can rear up to heights of 100 to 150 feet as it hits the shore, striking with devastating force.

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