Skip to main content

Indonesian disaster leaves whole villages buried

Sunday, October 04, 2009 PADANG: Whole villages in Indonesia's quake zone were found obliterated by landslides Saturday, as rescuers searched desperately for up to 4,000 people believed to be still trapped in rubble. The full extent of the damage from Wednesday's 7.6-magnitude earthquake emerged as attention turned to the hundreds of villages in the hills outside Padang, a devastated city of one million at the centre of rescue efforts. Journalists travelling from the coastal city on Sumatra island to the surrounding mountains encountered dozens of crumbled houses on the steep roads, and then four villages buried entirely by landslides. Search and rescue officers from the local government said that up to 400 people could have perished in the four hillside villages alone, including a wedding party of 30. "The difficulty in this rescue operation is that the houses are buried under the soil as much as four metres (13 feet) deep," the officer named Topan told media. "So far we have been using our hands to dig." One body was seen lying in a stream nearby, but he said he expected many more would be found. The 100-strong rescue team was unable to bring in heavy machinery because of the broken, narrow roads. Another official said about 600 people were missing in landslides northwest of Padang. "We've only found three dead," local health ministry crisis centre chief Jasmarizal told media.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

India's swine flu death rate is increasing

Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in...

Snake bite deaths

Monday, July 06, 2009 COLOMBO: The Sri Lankan government recorded some 33,000 snake bites in 2008, with most of the victims coming from remote villages.The Department of Government Information said in a statement that most of the snake bite cases could be fatal if neglected.The statement said snake bites are often neglected in Sri Lanka as victims do not seek treatment at hospitals where advanced medication is available. Instead, the victims rush to traditional type of treatment which could be a risk, reports Xinhua.Snake bites death at domestic level, outside hospitals, go unrecorded, said the statement.Most victims of snake bite are from the rural and remote villages where there is no electricity after dusk.Statistics show that Sri Lanka has over 90 species of snake with around 10 species possessing venom capable of killing a human being.In Sri Lanka the annual death rate due to snake bite envenoming is one of the highest in the world being 6 in 100,000 population.

Suicide bombings kill 18 in Iraq

Thursday, August 13, 2009 MOSUL: At least 18 people, most of them members of the ancient Yazidi religious sect, were killed when two suicide bombers blew themselves up on Thursday in a packed cafe in northern Iraq, a local government official said.At least 31 people were also wounded after the bombers detonated suicide belts packed with explosives in the cafe in Kalaa town, in the district of Sanjar, local district chief Dakheel Qassem Hasoon, told a foreign news agency."Two suicide bombers entered the Cafe Barbaroz at 4:30 pm (1330 GMT) and blew themselves up, killing 18 civilians and wounding 31. Most of the victims were Yazidis," Hasoon said.Kalaa, northwest of the insurgent stronghold of Mosul in northern Nineveh province is predominantly populated by the minority Yazidi religious sect, as well as Arabs and Kurds.The attack is the deadliest since Monday, when 51 people were killed across Iraq, including 28 members of the tiny Shabak sect cut down when two truck bombs det...