Tsunami death rises to more than 370
JAKARTA: The tsunami in Indonesia killed at least 373 people and injured more than 1,400 on the islands of Java and Sumatra, an official said yesterday.
“A total of 1,459 people are injured, while 128 remain missing,” Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency, said in a statement.
The death toll had been put at 281 earlier yesterday.
Meanwhile, funerals were held yesterday for several members of an Indonesian pop band killed when a tsunami slammed into a stage where they were performing an open-air concert.
Relatives of Muhammad Awal Purbani – bassist for the group Seventeen – sobbed and hugged each other at a service in Indonesia’s cultural capital Yogyakarta, including a threeyear-old daughter and his wife who was several months pregnant.
The group’s road manager Oki Wijaya, guitarist Herman Sikumbang and crew member Rukmana Rustam were also buried yesterday in separate services in their hometowns.
Local media have reported that Wisnu Andi Darmawan, the band’s missing drummer, had been found dead yesterday.
Seventeen’s frontman Riefian Fajarsyah – whose wife is still missing two days after the disaster – posted a picture of the band online and suggested that Darmawan had been killed.
That would leave Fajarsyah as the only surviving member of the group, which has released a half dozen albums and commands a large fan base in their native country.
The band was playing Saturday night to a crowd at a companysponsored event at the Tanjung Lesung Beach Resort on the western tip of Java when the wall of water hit.
Dramatic video posted online showed the tsunami smashing into the concert, hurling band members from the stage and slamming into the audience.
On the video, fans can be seen clapping and cheering before a wave rips under the stage, sending the band members and their equipment crashing into the men and women dancing at the front.
The shocking video then suddenly stops. — Reuters