Emergency aid began arriving yesterday in areas devastated by a 6.3-magnitude earthquake in Indonesia, but officials said supplies were not being delivered fast enough to victims who begged for help on roads lined with crumpled buildings.
An aid plane chartered by the UN's children agency arrived in the city of Solo, about three hours from the hardest-hit district of Bantul on Java island. It was loaded with water, tents, stoves and cooking sets that officials said would be distributed later yesterday.
On Sunday, three UN trucks brought high-energy biscuits to survivors and two Singapore military cargo planes arrived at Yogyakarta airport with doctors and medical supplies.
PHOTO: AP
But officials said relief supplies remained inadequate.
"We have received food and medicine from the government but it's not enough," said Suparno, a neighborhood official in Bantul who goes by one name, like many Indonesians. "How can I distribute 40kg of rice to 1,200 people?"
Hundreds of villagers lined main roads in the disaster zone, holding out donation boxes. They explained that any money collected would be used communally to buy rice, oil and candles.
"We need help. Anything at all," one sign read.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono acknowledged a "lack of coordination" in aid distribution when he visited refugees yesterday and called for government officials to be "more agile."
"I saw in many areas that there are many things that need to be speeded up," he said.
Yudhoyono -- criticized by some as being hesitant to act in the past -- spent the first night after Saturday's quake sleeping in a tent along with survivors and moved his office to the nearby city of Yogyakarta to supervise relief operations.
The social affairs ministry said yesterday that the death toll from Saturday's earthquake had risen to at least 5,136.
The majority of those killed in the quake -- 3,082 people -- lived in Bantul district, south of the city of Yogyakarta, according to the latest figures issued by the ministry via fax.
More than 1,660 others died in Klaten district, in Central Java province, the ministry said.
The quake left an estimated 200,000 people homeless, most of whom are now living in shacks close to their former homes or in shelters erected in rice fields. Hospitals overflowed with bloodied survivors.
The area affected by the quake stretches across hundreds of square kilometers of mostly farming communities to the south of the ancient city of Yogyakarta.
Countries across Asia and the world have pledged millions of dollars, tonnes of supplies and hundreds of personnel -- and Indonesia said late on Sunday it would allocate US$107 million to help rebuild over the next year.
The US military plans to send 100 doctors, nurses and medical technicians from a base in Okinawa to Indonesia.
also see story:
Big economic hit from quake unlikely
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS