Hundreds still missing as Indonesia tsunami toll crosses 350

PANGANDARAN, Indonesia - A tsunami that swept through fishing villages and resorts on Indonesia's Java island killed 368 people and more than 200 others are missing, officials said today.

More than 54,000 people have been displaced, they said.

There was no warning before the waves struck on Monday, despite efforts to set up warning systems after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami left 230,000 dead or missing, including 170,000 in Indonesia.

But many residents and tourists on the southern Java coast recognised the signs and fled to higher ground as the sea receded before huge waves came crashing ashore.

"When the waves came, I heard people screaming and then I heard something like a plane about to crash nearby and I just ran," Uli Sutarli, a plantation worker who was on hard-hit Pangandaran beach, said.

The waves washed cars, motorbikes and boats into hotels and storefronts, flattened homes and restaurants, and flooded rice fields up to 500 metres from the sea along a stretch of the densely populated coastline.

An official at the welfare ministry's disaster management centre said the death toll had climbed to 368 while 235 people were missing.

At least four non-Indonesians were among the dead. One was a Dutch national, health department officer Yuyun Ruhiyat said. She had no information about the other three.

Soldiers tried to retrieve bodies trapped under rubble on Tuesday. Metro TV reported several bodies were found in trees along Pangandaran beach near Ciamis town, 270km southeast of Jakarta.

Anxious survivors lifted yellow sheets covering dozens of bodies lining a hospital floor as they searched for relatives in Pangandaran, which bore the brunt of the damage.

One man collapsed over the corpse of a small child, her body streaked with mud. Pangandaran's hospitals were packed with injured people.

"I was with my daughter in my house by the beach. I was preparing to leave the house when I saw the water had receded," said Yati Maryati.

"I couldn't hold on to my daughter when the wave suddenly struck and swept away my house. There's still no news of her," she cried, sitting in a hospital bed with bruises and bandages all over her body.

Some of the homeless were using floormats and sheets of plastic to make temporary shelters on hillsides on Tuesday. Relief agencies had yet to supply tents in the Pangandaran area, although truckloads of aid were beginning to arrive.

"People have started returning to their houses, although most of them are still staying on higher ground," said Pangandaran disaster centre officer Dwi Hasyim Ashari.

The US Geological Survey rated the undersea quake's magnitude at 7.7. with its epicentre about 180km off the hardest hit spot on Java's southern coast.

No tsunami warning system has been set up for the southern coast of Java. An Indonesian warning system was supposed to be up and running by now after the 2004 tsunami, the worst on record, but it has stalled.

Asked how many tsunami buoys Indonesia has in operation since it launched the first stage of its warning system off the coast of Aceh in northern Sumatra last year, a government official assigned to the project said: "None."

Indonesia's 17,000 islands sprawl along a belt of intense volcanic and seismic activity, part of what is called the "Pacific Ring of Fire".

Earthquakes are frequent. In May, one near the city of Yogyakarta in central Java killed more than 5700 people.

- REUTERS