JAKARTA– The death toll of Monday’s earthquake in west Indonesia has jumped to 268, and 151 others are still missing, a local official said, yesterday.
“The number of deaths has reached 268 people now,” Head of the National Disaster Management Agency, Suharyanto, told a press conference.
The 5.6-magnitude quake, which hit Indonesia’s West Java province on Monday, also left 1,083 people injured, and forced 58,362 others to flee their homes, as the tremors of the quake destroyed over 21,000 houses and infrastructure facilities, he said.
Search and rescue operations for the quake victims are still underway, Suharyanto said.
Earlier yesterday, Indonesian President, Joko Widodo, asked authorities to prioritise the operation and to rescue the victims first.
The government would compensate the houses damaged by the tremors, ranging from about 10 million rupiahs to 50 million rupiahs, the president said, when visiting the affected areas.
Widodo stressed, the new houses to be built must be able to resist the earthquake tremors.
The quake struck at 13:21 Jakarta time (0621 GMT) on Monday, with the epicentre at 10 km south-west of the district of Cianjur, in West Java province, and a depth of 10 km, the meteorological, climatological and geophysical agency said. (1 U.S. dollar equals 2,005 rupiah)
Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK