Indonesia: Shock hits at 7.58 a.m. local time: 4,422 dead in Aceh and North Sumatra. John Aglionby in Jakarta, Rory McCarthy in Kalapet, near Pondicherry, Jonathan Steele in Colombo and Maseeh Rahman in Delhi report
The earth began to move 40 km below the sea-bed, a massive rupturing of the earth's crust off the north-western tip of Sumatra. A section of sea-bed, 1,000 km long, rose up to 30 metres at a spot approximately 250 km south-east of the city of Banda Aceh and 1,600 km north-west of the Indonesian capital of Jakarta.
Millions of people were living, fishing and holidaying around the Bay of Bengal and on the coast of Thailand and Malaysia, hundreds of miles from the epicentre. They were not to know that the gentle shaking that caused skyscrapers in Singapore and Chiang Mai in northern Thailand to sway would unleash a devastating tsunami, bringing a wall of water crashing down on their shores.
Mohammed Firdus (36) from Bireuen, Aceh province, was on the porch of his house, about 200 metres from the sea. He heard a rumbling, but the ground was not shaking. Someone came running fast from the beach, shouting, "huge wave, huge wave".
Mr Firdus said: "And then I saw the water. It was a wall at least a metre high coming down the track towards us all. We all immediately turned and ran towards the main road with the water following us."
Officials said it was impossible to say how many people were killed by the earthquake because it was quickly followed by tsunami striking Aceh province and the smaller islands.
Thailand: Shock hits at 8 a.m.: 300 dead, dozens of foreign tourists feared missing, more than 5,000 injured.
The packed Thai tourist resorts on Phuket and Phi Phi islands were the next to be hit with a succession of tsunamis 10 metres high. Montri Charnvichai, a resident of Phuket, was on the beach at 10 a.m. when suddenly the sea water disappeared and the beach dried. He said: "Then the first wave hit. It must have been travelling at about 70 km per hour, it was very fast. It swept up the beach, carrying everything with it. Many, many people in the sea at this time, and many of them were tourists. I have no idea what happened to them."
Then the second wave hit, about two minutes after the first. It was three metres high and crashed into the buildings lining the shore.
Simon Clark, a British photographer holidaying on Koh Ngai, described a huge wave crashing on to the beach, destroying everything. "People who were snorkelling were dragged along the coral and washed up on the beach, and people who were sunbathing got washed into the sea."
The tsunami struck Phuket just after 10 a.m., when Christmas revellers were just starting to surface. Dawn Taylor from Stockport in England, who was on Kamala beach, said: "A group of us were enjoying the beach when suddenly we saw this wall of water coming towards us. We just ran. The scale of the devastation is just enormous."
The more remote Phi Phi islands, where the film The Beach was filmed, were hit even more badly than Phuket. Heavy seas, however, prevented people from being evacuated.
Malaysia Tsunami hits soon after 8 a.m.: 42 dead.
Most of the fatalities in Malaysia were people swimming and jet-skiing off beaches on the island of Penang who were struck by the tsunami. Other deaths were reported on the mainland, in Perak and Kedah states, from both tsunamis and the original quake as thousands of buildings were damaged or destroyed.
Jasper Bintner from Saskatche- wan, Canada, was staying at a guest house at Batu Ferringhi, north-west of Penang island. "At first you could just see a wall of waves in the distance with the white tops crashing down.
"Luckily we had a lot of visual warning so we could get out of the water and the locals made sure we did. Around the corner, where the people were washed out to sea, they didn't have any warning. [ The tsunami] just swept them off the beach and out to sea."
India Tremors at 6.30 a.m.; tsunami hits at 9 a.m.: at least 2,000 dead, including 1,625 in Tamil Nadu.
The fishermen along India's southern Coromandel coast had just brought in the night's catch. Kalai Arasan in Kalapet, near Pondicherry, was crouched on the beach when he saw the ocean rise up before him. "Suddenly I heard people from the village shouting: 'Run, run for your lives.' I saw the water coming and I tried to run back to my house to find my children but as I got close I was washed away."
In just a few minutes, more than 1,800 villagers were killed along the eastern Indian coastline and thousands more were left homeless.
Sri Lanka Tsunami hits at 9 a.m.: more than 3,500 dead.
Standing blankly beside the pile of thin timber and corrugated roofing which were all that remained of his flimsy wooden house, Ugatsiri Vidanage said: "The first big wave came up the beach well beyond the treeline. It gave us a kind of warning. Half an hour later we saw a huge one, much bigger than the first. It smashed into the houses, destroying everything."
The poverty-stricken community of Moratuwa was one of Sri Lanka's worst-hit areas. Hundreds of shacks built alongside the railway which runs parallel to the island's west coast, 100 metres from the sea, were smashed by the water.
At the nearest hospital in Panadura, 29 bodies had been brought to the morgue, according to Moratuwa's assistant police superintendent. The town's main temple was sheltering about 3,000 people.
The island-wide death toll in what officials were calling Sri Lanka's worst natural disaster had reached 4,150 last night.
Maldives Tsunami hits at 9 a.m.: at least seven dead
The Maldives, a cluster of 1,192 tiny coral islands in the Indian Ocean off the south-west coast of India, was badly hit because much of its landmass is barely above water. Two-thirds of the capital island, Male, was flooded and outlying atolls were submerged. A British tourist died of a heart attack after seeing the huge wave heading toward him at White Sand beach resort on South Ari atoll. An Italian tourist was also seriously injured. Nearly 300 tourists were on the beach.