At least 654 people were killed by the tsunami that smashed into the heavily-populated south coast of Indonesia’s Java island this week, the government said on Saturday, raising the toll by 101.
As many as 329 remain missing and 978 people were injured after Monday’s tsunami, according to figures compiled by the National Disaster Management Coordinating Agency. It put the number of displaced people at more than 109 955.
The new death toll is an increase of 101 compared to Friday’s figure.
”Today’s death toll increased because there was a rise in the number of corpses found in the worst-hit district of Ciamis and in the Tasikmalaya and Garut districts in West Java province,” said a worker with the agency who identified himself as Drajat.
The deaths included five foreigners: one Dutch, a Swede, a Pakistani and two Saudis, the agency said. A French national was among those missing.
The agency also said two Dutch, a Japanese, Austrian, three Saudis and two French nationals were injured in the tsunami, which smashed ashore after a 7,7-magnitude quake struck off Java island.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Friday visited Pangandaran beach, one of the areas worst-hit by the tsunami, and urged rescue workers to continue the search for those missing as decomposed bodies continued to be pulled from rubble.
”Continue the search effort. Who knows? There could still be brothers and sisters we can rescue. Do not stop the search and rescue effort,” he said, complaining that too little heavy equipment had been mobilised for the work.
Thousands of tsunami survivors remain in refugee camps, most simply too petrified to go home.
Nerves have remained on edge along the nearly 200km stretch of tsunami-battered coastline, with swirling rumours of a second tsunami sparking mass panic here on Wednesday.
Indonesia was worst-hit by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which claimed about 168 000 lives in Aceh province. – AFP
