The death toll from Sunday’s powerful earthquake on the Indonesian island of Lombok yesterday rose to 131, as rescuers found more people crushed under collapsed buildings, although some still held out hope of finding survivors.
“We don’t know for sure how many people are alive under the rubble,” Indonesian National Board for Disaster Management spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told reporters.
“There are reports ... that there are people buried alive. It is a critical time for immediate evacuation,” he added.
Photo: Reuters / Melissa Delport
The board had previously put the number of dead at 105, including two on the neighboring island of Bali, which also felt the magnitude 6.9 quake.
Sutopo said the figure would rise further.
About 1,477 people were severely injured, with tens of thousands of homes damaged and more than 156,000 displaced, as authorities have appealed for more medical personnel and basic supplies.
Rescuers yesterday dug through the rubble of a mosque, hoping to reach the aunt of a sprinter who became a hero last month after winning 100m gold at the under-20 World Championships.
Salama, 52, is an aunt of Lalu Mohammad Zohri, who just more than a year ago could barely afford running shoes.
Rescuers used a mechanical digger to clear a jumble of metal rods and concrete beside the still-intact green dome of the mosque, but there were no signs that the woman was alive.
As hopes of finding more survivors faded, a humanitarian crisis loomed for thousands left homeless and in desperate need of clean water, food, medicine and shelter.
About three-quarters of Lombok’s north has been without electricity since Sunday, officials said, and aid workers are finding some hamlets hard to reach because bridges and roads were torn up by the disaster.
“Teams are speaking of coming across ghost towns, villages that have essentially been abandoned,” Matthew Cochrane of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement said on Tuesday.
He added that 80 percent of buildings had been damaged or destroyed.
Thousands of tourists have left Lombok fearing further earthquakes, some on extra flights provided by airlines and others on ferries to Bali.
Additional reporting by AFP
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