No image available
/ 5 November 2007
Indonesia’s deadly Mount Kelud billowed thick smoke on Monday amid signs of a major eruption, while another volcano nearby sent clouds of ash raining down on towns and villages. At least one other of Indonesia’s approximately 100 active volcanoes was also smoking as well as firing out red-hot stones and lava.
Survivors from an Indonesian ferry that sank in stormy weather recalled desperate days adrift at sea during interviews on Friday as hopes faded of rescuing about 400 people still missing a week after the ship went down. Indonesia has been wracked in recent weeks by seasonal storms.
Rescue ships collected scores of bloated corpses on Monday from seas close to where an Indonesian ferry sank in the Java Sea, but search teams also spotted survivors on life rafts and dropped food and water to them, officials said. Weeping relatives camped out at ports and a local hospital, desperate for news of the roughly 400 people still missing from the ferry.
A powerful earthquake rocked Indonesia’s Central Java province early on Saturday, flattening buildings and killing at least 309 people, hospitals and officials said. Scores of other people were injured. The 6,2-magnitude quake also triggered heightened activity in the region’s deadly Mount Merapi volcano, which has been spewing out clouds of hot ash, gas and lava.
Soldiers and volunteers used their bare hands on Thursday to search for survivors buried beneath tonnes of mud and rock after landslides wiped out several Indonesian villages, leaving more than 210 people dead or missing, officials said. Twenty-six bodies have been recovered since Wednesday.
Powerful bombs ripped through three crowded restaurants on the Indonesian resort island of Bali on Saturday, killing at least 25 people and wounding more than 100 — the second time terrorists have brought carnage to the tropical paradise in three years. Witnesses reported seeing dismembered bodies at the scene, many of them foreigners.