Tsunami death toll rises to 659
The death toll from the Indonesian tsunami rose to 659 after emergency workers reached a previously inaccessible area along Java island’s southern coast, the government said today.
Drajat Santosa, an official at the government’s National Disaster Management Co-ordinating Board, said nearly 100 bodies were found in a part of Ciamis district that had been cut off by a broken bridge.
The toll climbed to 659, he said, with 330 others missing.
A magnitude 7.7 earthquake triggered Monday’s tsunami, which struck a 180km stretch of Java island’s southern coast, destroying scores of houses, restaurants and hotels. Cars, motorbikes and boats were left mangled amid fishing nets, furniture and other debris.
Police and army teams have spent the week hunting for bodies in the ruins, while others took their search to the sea.
Some of the corpses found late yesterday were beneath the mangled steel bridge in Ciamis, just east of hardest-hit Pangandaran beach resort, Santosa said. Others were scattered in villages on the other side.
A few corpses were also recovered from the tiny island of Ayah just off Java’s coast, he said.
Indonesia started installing an early warning system after the 2004 tsunami that killed at least 216,000 people in a dozen Indian Ocean nations, more than half of them on Indonesia’s Sumatra island.
