Indonesia considers digging mass graves in devastated areas

Death toll from tsunami, earthquake rises to 1,649, disaster agency says

PALU, Indonesia — Search teams pulled bodies from obliterated neighborhoods in the disaster-stricken Indonesian city of Palu on Saturday as more aid rolled in and the government said it was considering making devastated areas into mass graves.

Indonesia’s disaster agency said the death toll from the powerful earthquake and tsunami climbed to 1,649, with at least 265 people still missing, though it said that number could be higher. More nations sent aid and humanitarian workers fanned out in the countryside.

The dead were still being recovered more than a week after the double disaster. Eight victims in black body bags of the national search and rescue agency were arranged in a row in the crumpled Palu neighborhood of Balaroa, destined for a mass grave.

Relatives cried as people placed long pieces of white cloth, to represent a Muslim burial rite, inside the bags.

Among them was 39-yearold Rudy Rahman, who said the bodies of two if his sons, 16 and 18, had been found. His youngest son was still missing. He watched as rescue workers unloaded the bags from a truck. His wife wept inconsolably.

“They were found in front of my brother’s house opposite the mosque,” Rahman said. “They found them holding each other. These two brothers were hugging each other.”

Balaroa was one of the areas hardest hit by the Sept. 28 magnitude 7.5 quake, which threw homes in the neighborhood tens of yards and left cars upright or perched on eruptions of concrete and asphalt. Many children were in the area’s mosque at the time of the quake for Quran recitation. An assistant to the imam had said none survived.

Indonesia’s top security minister, Wiranto, who uses a single name, said the government is considering turning Balaroa and Petobo, another neighborhood in Palu, into mass graves. Petobo disappeared into the earth as the force of the quake liquefied its soft soil.

Wiranto said efforts to retrieve bodies are problematic in those neighborhoods, where homes were sucked into the earth.He said it’s not safe for heavy equipment to operate there.

A Japanese Self Defense Force plane landed at Palu’s airport Saturday morning. Soldiers unloaded tons of supplies, including medicine.

DITA ALANGKARA/ASSOCIATED PRESS A rescue worker helps people who are looking for their missing relatives to identify a body at a mass grave for earthquake and tsunami victims in Palu, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, on Friday.