Rescue teams pushed deeper into Indonesia's earthquake-hit Sumatra today, finding entire villages obliterated by landslides and survivors desperate for aid three days after the tremor.
Today, rescuers pushed deeper into earthquake-hit Sumatra, finding entire villages obliterated by landslides, and homeless survivors desperate for food, water and shelter.
In Padang, a university town of 900,000, rescuers were still picking through collapsed buildings to look for perhaps thousands of people still buried beneath the rubble.
The massive damage to buildings and roads was hampering the aid effort.
In remoter areas, the scale of the disaster was only starting to become clear, with entire villages wiped out and survivors drinking coconut water after their drinking sources were contaminated.
Indonesia's disaster management agency put the toll of confirmed dead and missing at 809, and the United Nations said more than 1,000 had been killed in and around Padang.
Health Minister Siti Fadillah Supari was quoted by the news website detik.com as saying the death toll would rise but probably remain below 4,000.
The mayor of the district of Padang Pariaman, Muslim Kasim, said heavy digging machinery was starting to reach some areas, but that survivors desperately needed tents and blankets.
"We are devastated. Eighty percent of houses have caved in, roads are split and cracked," he said by telephone.
He said landslides had hit four hamlets, burying 350 people.
Even three days after the quake, of magnitude 7.6, many areas had seen no aid.
Asked about the rescue efforts in Pariaman, Vice President Jusuf Kalla said bluntly it was now about retrieving bodies.
"We can be sure that they are dead. So now we are waiting for burials," he said in footage shown on Metro TV.
Later he said that Indonesia most needed foreign help in the form of funds and reconstruction now, rather than rescuers.
Reuters