LEONE, American Samoa: Islanders of American Samoa mourned at a weekend prayer service for victims of the tsunami that obliterated villages on the shores of the South Pacific.

Families are still coming to terms with the sudden losses inflicted by Tuesday's tsunami waves that roared ashore after an underwater earthquake with a magnitude of up to 8.3. The disaster claimed at least 176 lives, in Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga.

In Samoa, scores of grieving people made a heartbreaking decision to sign over victims of the tsunami to the state for burial rather than take them back to ravaged villages for traditional funerals - a radical departure from Samoan tradition.