Death toll rises following Indonesia quake
The death toll from last weekend's powerful earthquake on Indonesia's Lombok island rose to 131 on Wednesday as rescuers found more people crushed under collapsed buildings.
"We don't know for sure how many people are alive under the rubble," Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, the spokesman for Indonesia's disaster mitigation agency (BNPB) told reporters in Jakarta.
"There are reports ... that there are people buried alive, it is a critical time for immediate evacuation," he added, without giving details.
BNPB had previously put the number of dead at 105, including two on the western neighbouring island of Bali, which also felt the 6.9 magnitude quake. Sutopo said the figure would rise still further.
Lombok had already been hit by a 6.4 magnitude earthquake on July 29 that killed 17 people and briefly stranded several hundred trekkers on the slopes of a volcano.
Indonesia sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire and is regularly hit by earthquakes. In 2004, the Indian Ocean tsunami killed 226,000 people in 13 countries, including more than 120,000 in Indonesia.
A woman was pulled alive on Tuesday from under a grocery store that fell apart in the rural north of the tropical holiday island, near the epicentre of Sunday's quake.
Rescuers dug through the rubble of a mosque on Wednesday, hoping to reach the aunt of a sprinter who became a national hero last month at the under-20 world championships in Finland.
Salama, 52, was at a prayer class in the Karangpangsor village mosque when the quake struck. She is an aunt by marriage of Lalu Muhammad Zohri, who just over a year ago could barely afford running shoes and was hardly known outside his village.
Published: by Radio NewsHub