Indonesia disaster death toll rises to 1,649
PALU (AP) — Indonesia’s disaster agency says the death toll from the earthquake and tsunami that struck the Sulawesi island last week has risen to 1,649.
Agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho says 265 people are reportedly missing, though more may be buried under deep mud and the rubble of homes and buildings that have collapsed.
He provided the updated figure yesterday at a news conference in Jakarta.
The twin disasters struck Palu and surrounding districts in Central Sulawesi province on Sept. 28.
Aid is continuing to pour into hard-hit areas of Indonesia’s Sulawesi island, which has been rattled by some 450 aftershocks since an earthquake and tsuna- mi struck just over a week ago.
Meanwhile, rescuers picking through the grim aftermath of Indonesia’s quake-tsunami issued a fresh public health warning yesterday as more decaying corpses were unearthed from beneath the ruined city of Palu.
More than a thousand people may still be missing in the seaside city on Sulawesi island, officials said, after the region was hit by a powerful quake and a wall of water, with the official death toll now at 1,649.
Hopes of finding anyone alive a full eight days since the disaster have all but faded, though the Indonesian authorities have not officially called off the search for survivors.
Sergeant Syafaruddin, from an army unit in Makassar south of Palu, asks for a body bag to be brought across to a spot near where the remnants of an Islamic school now stands.
Two of his soldiers emerge from the ditch with the body bag sagging in the middle but looking too light to be a corpse — they say they found the heads of two adults and one child.
“There are no survivors here. We just find bodies, every day,” says Syafaruddin, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.