Frantic search for survivors in Indonesian earthquake

Banda Aceh - The desperate search for survivors of the latest natural disaster to strike Indonesia was under way last night as the death toll rose to 430 confirmed dead, with more than 20,000 displaced on the island of Nias.

A Foreign Office spokesman said it was looking into reports of "less than a dozen" Britons who may be missing, although he stressed this did not mean they had all been caught up in the aftermath of the quake.

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"There have been reports of a handful of British tourists who are possibly missing, and the Foreign Office is investigating these reports," he said.

Scores of people with relatives on the devastated island, off the western coast of Sumatra and close to the epicentre of Monday's 8.7 magnitude earthquake, flocked to mainland harbours to get boats to take them to join in the search for their loved ones.

A huge international relief effort was launched as it became clear that more than 80% of the buildings on Nias had been destroyed or ren dered uninhabitable by the earthquake, which struck at about 11.09pm local time. The death toll was expected to rise.

Indonesia's vice president, Yusuf Kalla, earlier said that up to 2,000 people could have been killed by buildings collapsing on Nias. The Boxing Day tsunami had already killed 340 Nias residents and left 10,000 homeless.

Yesterday, smoke drifted out of rubble and concrete homes whose walls had folded in on themselves, Associated Press reported. A football field in the centre of Gunungsitoli, the island's capital, and close to the palm-fringed Indian Ocean beach had been transformed into a triage centre where a dozen seriously injured islanders, some of them unconscious, lay on doors salvaged from wrecked homes.

Outside the town's Santa Maria church, about 20 bodies wrapped in white sheets, candles flickering at their heads, were laid out on the street.

One resident, Datot Mendra, prepared to spend the night lying next to his wife. Tomorrow he will bury her and his sister and two other family members killed by the earthquake. "What will I tell my children?" the 55-year-old restaurant owner asked. "I can't face it."

Countries across the world offered troops and medical aid as the scale of the disaster became clearer and thousands were evacuated. A Hercules aircraft carrying a Red Cross team and medical supplies was one of only two planes to touch down yesterday on Nias.

Representatives of aid agencies who visited Nias gave conflicting accounts of the devast-ation there. Masood Hyder, the UN deputy humanitarian coordinator in Indonesia, told the Guardian that his four assessment teams had counted about 100 collapsed houses in Gunungsitoli.

Jonathan Evans, of Catholic Relief Services, said his team's assessment was more serious. "In Gunungsitoli they reckon the physical devastation and loss of life is pretty high, about 80-85%," he said. "My staff think the death toll is probably in the hundreds. The most urgent needs are body bags and medical staff." He put damage in the smaller towns at 70-75%.

Authorities on the island put the death toll in the two main towns at between 300 and 400.

On nearby Simeulue island, about half of the buildings were seriously damaged.

No one has yet been to the two tiny islands between Nias and Simeulue that are nearest to the earthquake's epicentre, Bailo Banyak and Aceh Sinkal.

Aid workers on Nias said there were at least 5,000 refugees in Gunungsitoli alone. They pleaded for supplies.

In the Sumatran town of Sibolga, scores of people with relatives on Nias were trying to find a boat to take them to the islands. "I need to know what happened to my wife and children," Armadi said. "I have not been able to contact them and no one knows anything about them."

Residents of Sibolga said that everyone had run to the hills when they felt the intensity of Monday's earthquake.

Maria Francisca said the streets quickly became gridlocked. "Everyone headed for the hills," she said. "It was mad on the streets. We were all convinced another tsunami was coming ... We all stayed up in the hills until the morning." -- Guardian News

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