Body bags fill up after powerful quake

Mamuju – A powerful earthquake on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island has killed at least 60 people, authorities said yesterday, with thousands left homeless as rescuers raced to find anyone still alive under mountains of rubble more than two days after the disaster.

But monsoon rains were challenging the search effort, as hundreds of injured overwhelmed the only local hospital still operating in the aftermath of the 6.2-magnitude quake, which struck early on Friday.

The tremor triggered panic among residents of the island, which was hit by a 2018 tsunami disaster that killed thousands.

Rescuers have been filling body bags with corpses hauled from beneath crumpled buildings in Mamuju, a city of 110 000 people in West Sulawesi province, where a hospital was flattened and a shopping mall lay in ruins.

Others were killed south of the city.

The death toll could still climb. Excavators, cranes and other heavy equipment were deployed across the devastated seaside city where buildings were reduced to a tangled mass of twisted metal.

It was unclear how many people – dead or alive – could be still under the debris.

“We heard a roaring sound and the house started shaking,” said survivor Jumardi, 50, from a shelter where he and six family members took refuge. “All I had in my mind was that I would die... Everyone was panicking.”

Authorities have not given a figure for how many survivors have been rescued.

Corpses were recovered from under a collapsed hospital, with five of a family of eight found dead in their home. –