At least 4,000 residents of West Aceh district in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam province have been forced to flee their homes by tidal waves that have been hitting their coastal villages continuously over the past few days. West Aceh district administration spokesman Mursalin, when contacted by phone in the district town of Meulaboh on Saturday, said the villagers started to abandon their homes on Thursday when the tidal waves began pounding their areas, ANTARA reported. Initially, on Thursday, the tidal waves hit villages in Johan Pahlawan and Samatiga sub districts but the next day they had also affected at least 10 more villages, Mursalin said. In Johan Pahlawan sub district, tidal waves occurred in the coastal villages of Padang Sirahet, Kampung Pasir, Kampung Belakang, Suak Indrapuri, and six other villages in Samatiga sub district namely Suak Ribee, Suak Sigadeng, Ujung Kalak, Kuala Bubun, Lhok Bubon, and Suak Padang. All villages along Aceh`s west coat facing the Indian Ocean were obliterated by a 9.0 magnitude tectonic earthquake and a subsequent tsunami on December 26, 2004 that killed more than 200,000 people and left hundreds of thousands of others missing. Earlier, the Meteorology and Geophysics Office in Aceh had warned the people in the province`s west and south coastal areas of possible tidal waves of up to four meters high in the upcoming days. Besides Aceh, tidal waves of up to seven meters high also struck the coastlines of other provinces in Indonesia such as North Sumatra, West Sumatra, Bengkulu, and Lampung on Sumatra island, West Java, Central Java, East Java, and Bali island.
