Quake-hit Indonesia struggles to complete rescues, offer aid
LADING-LADING, Indonesia — Soldiers pulled a man alive from the rubble of a large mosque flattened by an earthquake on the Indonesian island of Lombok, while thousands of homeless villagers waited for aid Tuesday and stranded tourists camped at beaches and in the lobbies of damaged hotels.
The north of Lombok has been devastated by the magnitude 7.0 quake that struck Sunday night, killing at least 105 people, seriously injuring more than 230 and destroying thousands of buildings. Two days after the quake, rescuers were still struggling to reach all the affected areas and authorities expected the death toll to rise.
Muhamad Juanda, who narrowly escaped the mosque collapse, said 100 people were praying inside when the earth began to roll. Many got out but dozens were trapped, he said.
Oxfam said more than 20,000 people were in temporary shelters and thousands more were camping out in the open. It said clean drinking water was scarce because of a recent spell of extremely dry weather in Lombok. Food, medical supplies, tarpaulins and clothes are also urgently needed, it said.
National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said some villages in the worst-hit areas of the north have not received any help as well as some in the west of the island.
Hundreds of tourists and workers were still trying to get off three outlying resort islands where power was cut off and hotels and hostels were damaged. Nugroho said so far more than 4,600 foreign and Indonesian tourists had been evacuated from the islands.