Asia-Pacific

Indonesia tsunami toll hits 343 as bodies found

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-10-28 20:21

MENTAWAI ISLANDS, Indonesia - Rescuers searching islands ravaged by a tsunami off western Indonesia raised the death toll to 343 Thursday as more bodies were found and said the number is likely to climb higher because hundreds of missing people may have been swept away.

Elsewhere in Indonesia, the volcano that killed 33 people this week began erupting again, though there were no reports of new injuries or damage. Mourners held a mass burial Thursday during a lull in Mount Merapi's rumblings.

Related readings:  Tragic day as Indonesia suffers nature's wrath  Indonesia's volcano erupts  Tsunami kills 311; no Chinese casualties  Indonesian tsunami kills 272; help finally arrives

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was to meet Thursday with survivors of the twin catastrophes, which struck within 24 hours in different corners of the seismically charged region, severely testing the nation's emergency response network.

Officials say a multimillion-dollar warning system installed after a monster 2004 quake and tsunami broke down one month ago because it was not being properly maintained.

In the tsunami-ravaged Mentawai islands, search and rescue teams - kept away for days by stormy seas and bad weather - found roads and beaches with swollen corpses lying on them, according to Harmensyah, head of the West Sumatra provincial disaster management center.

Some wore face masks as they wrapped corpses in black body bags on Pagai Utara, one of the four main islands in the Mentawai chain located between Sumatra and the Indian Ocean. Huge swaths of land were underwater and houses lay crumpled with tires and slabs of concrete piled on the surrounding sand.

Ferry Faisal, of the West Sumatra provincial disaster management agency, raised the official toll Thursday to 343 from 311 earlier in the day. He said 338 people are still missing.

Harmensyah said the teams were losing hope of finding those missing since the wall of water, created by a 7.8-magnitute earthquake, crashed into the islands on Monday.

"They believe many, many of the bodies were swept to sea," he said.