AFTERSHOCKS ADD TO QUAKE TOLL
INDONESIA Officials have recorded a staggering 450 aftershocks since the magnitude 7.0 quake on Sunday that killed at least 321 people and damaged or destroyed nearly 68,000 homes on Indonesia’s Lombok Island.
An aftershock on Thursday buried four people on the already ravaged island, said disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho.
Before Sunday’s quake, another strong quake on July 29 had already shaken Lombok, killing 16 people.
Some 270,000 people are now homeless or otherwise displaced, officials said.
Seismic activity is commonplace across the Indonesian archipelago, which is home to more active volcanoes than anywhere else on Earth. A magnitude 9.1 earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra in 2004 spawned a tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen countries.