Indonesia hit by quakes, tsunami

JAKARTA:A tsunami caused deaths when it hit a small city on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi on Friday after a major quake offshore, collapsing buildings and cutting off power, officials said, although exact casualties were unknown.

The tsunami up to 2 metres high struck beaches as dusk fell in Palu, a sleepy but growing tourist resort, and the nearby fishing town of Donggala, closest to the epicentre of the quake 27 km away, officials said.

“The earthquake and tsunami caused several casualties ... while initial reports show that victims died in the rubble of a collapsing building,” National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told reporters. “The number of casualties and the full impact is still being calculated.”

Sutopo said the disaster caused a power outage that cut communications in Donggala and surrounding areas. The Communications Ministry is working to repair 276 electricity base stations. Officials said aftershocks, the communications breakdown and the power outage made it hard to coordinate rescue efforts.

More than 600,000 people live in Palu and Donggala. “The 1.5- to two-metretsunamihasreceded,” Dwikorita Karnawati, who heads Indonesia’s meteorology and geophysics agency, BMKG, told Reuters. “The situation is chaotic. People are running on the streets and buildings have collapsed. There is a ship washed ashore.”

BMKG had earlier issued a tsunami warning but lifted it within the hour.

Amateur footage shown by local TV stations, which could not immediately be authenticated by Reuters, showed waters crashing into houses along Palu’s shoreline, scattering shipping containers and flooding into a mosque in the city. The national search and rescue agency will deploy a large ship and helicopters to aid the operation, said agency chief Muhammad Syaugi, adding he had not been able to contact his team in Palu. REUTERS