Time Running Out For Survivors As Indonesia Toll Tops 1,400

The death toll in Indonesia's twin quake-tsunami disaster passed 1,400 Wednesday, with time running out to rescue survivors and the UN warning of "vast" unmet needs that have fuelled looting.

Wani, Indonesia, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 3rd Oct, 2018 ) :The death toll in Indonesia's twin quake-tsunami disaster passed 1,400 Wednesday, with time running out to rescue survivors and the UN warning of "vast" unmet needs that have fuelled looting.

Indonesian soldiers have been ordered to fire on those raiding stores on the quake and tsunami-struck island of Sulawesi, a colonel told AFP, after desperate survivors emptied shops of food and water.

Meanwhile the authorities have set a tentative deadline of Friday to find anyone still trapped under rubble, at which point -- a week after this devastating double disaster -- the chances of finding survivors will dwindle to almost zero.

Military spokesman M. Thohir said the number of confirmed dead has risen to 1,411, while the disaster agency said 519 bodies have already been buried.

Government rescue workers seeking survivors are focusing on half a dozen key sites around the seaside city of Palu -- the Hotel Roa-Roa where up to 60 people are still believed buried, a shopping mall, a restaurant and the Balaroa area where the sheer force of the quake turned the earth temporarily to mush.

At a minimum, 150 people are unaccounted for beneath the rubble, officials said.

According to the UN's humanitarian office almost 200,000 people need urgent help, among them tens of thousands of children, with an estimated 66,000 homes destroyed or damaged by the 7.5-magnitude quake and the tsunami it spawned.

Despite the Indonesian government having earlier urged foreign rescue teams to "stand down" because the crisis was in hand, residents in hard-hit, remote villages like Wani in Donggala province say little help has arrived and hope is fading.

"Twelve people in this area haven't yet been found," Mohammad Thahir Talib told AFP.

"In the area to the south, because there hasn't been an evacuation we don't know if there are bodies. It's possible there are more," the 39-year-old said.

The Red Cross expressed frustration at the slow pace of the response.

"There are still large areas of what might be the worst-affected areas that haven't been properly reached, but the teams are pushing, they are doing what they can," said Matthew Cochrane, a spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

The World Health Organization has estimated that across Donggala, some 310,000 people have been affected by the disaster.