The army chief in Indonesia’s Aceh province says the death toll in Wednesday’s earthquake has jumped to 97 from 54 as rescuers pull more bodies from the rubble.
Maj. Gen. Tatang Sulaiman says in a live television interview that four people were pulled from the rubble alive and believes there could be another four or five still buried. He didn’t say whether they were alive or not.
“Hopefully we would be able to finish the evacuation from the rubble before sunset” he said.
The shallow 6.5-magnitude quake hit Pidie Jaya district at dawn, toppling homes, flattening buildings and sending people running for higher ground at 5:03AM. There was no tsunami alert.
It was centred about 10 kilometres North of Reuleut, a town in northern Aceh, at a depth of 17 kilometres.
Pidie Jaya District Chief Aiyub Abbas also said hundreds of people in the district have been injured and more than 40 buildings were flattened. The district is located 18 kilometres south-west of the epicentre.
The death toll has continued to rise as rescue crews sift through the rubble, sometimes by hand, to find those trapped below.
Earlier Chief Aiyub Abbas said, “There is an urgent need for excavation equipment to move heavy debris and emergency supplies.”
A frantic rescue effort involving dozens of villagers, soldiers and police were underway in Meureudu, a severely affected town in Pidie Jaya. Suyatno, who heads Aceh’s search and rescue agency, said three excavators were trying to remove debris from shop houses where three people were believed buried.
“In the nearby district of Bireuen, a teacher at an Islamic building school died after being hit by falling debris,” said health worker Achmad Taufiq.
Residents of the nearby town of Lhokseumawe ran out of their houses in panic during the quake and many people fled to higher ground.
The earthquake was felt across much of Aceh, which was devastated by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
Indonesia experiences frequent seismic and volcanic activity due to its position on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where tectonic plates collide.
In December 2004, a massive earthquake off Sumatra Island triggered a tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen countries. More than 160,000 people died in Indonesia alone, and most of those deaths occurred in Aceh.
Read more: At least 52 dead as earthquake hits Indonesia’s Aceh province