At Least 87 Dead or Missing in Landslides in Indonesia
Rescuers search for victims at a village hit by landslides in Tawangmangu, Central Java, Indonesia, on Thursday, December 27, 2007.
Rescuers pulled dozens of corpses from villages devastated by landslides and floods in western Indonesia, many digging through mud with their bare hands as they were lashed by rain.
At least 87 were dead or missing, officials said.
Photograph from AP
Blontank Poer in Ledoksari, Indonesia
Associated Press
December 27, 2007
Rescuers pulled corpses from the mud in villages devastated by landslides and floods in western Indonesia Thursday.
At least 87 were killed or feared dead and tens of thousands forced from their homes, an official said, a day after the three-year anniversary of the tsunami that killed more than 150,000 people in Indonesia alone.
Days of torrential rain sent mud crashing down into villages in hilly districts of Java island, and authorities Thursday were still struggling to get backhoes and diggers past blocked roads.
Varying Tolls
Rustam Pakaya, a disaster official in the ministry of health, said 87 people had been killed or were feared dead in the landslides. Earlier, local officials had given varying tolls for the dead and missing.
Most of the victims were killed in the village of Ledoksari in Karanganyar district. (See general map.)
Villagers, police, and soldiers uncovered 12 of the corpses in the village on Thursday, several of them children, said Heru Aji Pratomo, the head of the local disaster coordinating agency.
In east Java province, police were searching a swollen river after a bridge was swept away Wednesday as several motorbikes passed over it. Two people were reported missing, said local police Capt. Sunarta, who uses only one name.
"No one else is missing that we know of," he said, adding that authorities had tracked down the owners of 13 motorcycles and bicycles recovered from the water.
Rains and Tides
Rivers bloated by days of rain burst their banks in the towns of Solo and Sragen, forcing more than 28,000 people to leave their homes, said Pakaya. Witnesses said water levels were a yard (meter) high in places.
Residents scrambled to save their most valuable possessions, from television sets to motorbikes. Others carried the elderly through the water or sat on roof tops, waiting for the floods to subside.
Seasonal rains and high tides in recent days have caused widespread flooding across much of Indonesia, the world's fourth most-populous nation. Millions of people live in mountainous regions and near fertile flood plains that are close to rivers.
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