Jakarta: As many as 5,000 people are believed missing from two hard-hit areas in Palu more than a week after the Indonesian city was devastated by an earthquake and tsunami, an official said on Sunday.
Indonesia’s disaster agency said the figure was based on estimates from local heads in the Petobo and Balaroa areas of the city, where entire neighbourhoods disappeared in the twin disaster on Sulawesi island that has seen 1,763 bodies recovered so far.
“Based on reports from the heads of Balaroa and Petobo, there are about 5,000 people who have not been found,” agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told reporters Sunday, adding that it was difficult to know the exact figure given the areas were largely buried under mountains of mud and wreckage.
The September 28 7.5-magnitude earthquake that triggered a tsunami on the island had also left rescue workers and officials trying to determine how many people were still missing after several villages were destroyed, disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said.
“Victims who have not been found have been declared missing,” Nugroho said, adding that the number of fatalities was likely to increase once the damage in rural areas was fully assessed.
Indonesian authorities had previously estimated the number of missing persons to be a few hundred despite several organisations working in the affected region warning that there could be more than a thousand missing in just Petobo and Balaroa, both in Palu. (Agencies)
