Indonesia tsunami toll 256, hunt on for more

PANGANDARAN, Indonesia - At least 256 people were killed after a tsunami smashed into fishing villages and resorts on Indonesia's Java island, following a strong undersea earthquake, rescue officials said.

At least four non-Indonesians were among the dead, 122 people were missing and 28,000 people were displaced, officials said.

No warnings were reported despite regional efforts to establish early warning systems after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed 230,000, including 170,000 in Indonesia.

But many residents and tourists recognised the signs and fled to higher ground as the sea receded before huge waves came crashing ashore yesterday.

The waves flung cars, motorbikes and boats into hotels and storefronts, flattened homes and restaurants, and flooded rice fields up to 500 metres from the sea along a stretch of the densely populated southern Java coastline.

One of the four dead foreigners was a Dutch national identified as Yuyun Ruhiyat, a local health department officer based in Ciamis regency, told Reuters. She had no information about the other three.

No other country reported casualties or damage from the tsunami, which struck yesterday at 3.24am local time (8.24pm yesterday NZT).

Soldiers tried to retrieve bodies trapped under rubble today. Metro TV reported several bodies were found in trees along Pangandaran beach near Ciamis town, 270 km southeast of Jakarta.

Anxious survivors lifted sheets covering dozens of bodies lining a hospital floor as they searched for relatives missing after the waves battered their homes, leaving the area strewn with bamboo poles, fallen trees and collapsed straw huts.

TV footage showed a man flinging himself down onto the corpse of a small child, her body streaked with mud, alongside lines of bodies under plastic sheets in a makeshift morgue.

A Belgian tourist named Ian told Reuters Television his warning came when a waitress at a beachside bar ran by him screaming.

"I saw this big cloud of dark sea water coming up to me. So I grabbed the bag and started running ... and then the water grabbed me and pulled me under and I was thinking this is the end, I'm going down," he said.

But he grabbed onto a cooler and rode the wave into a nearby hotel.

Many people returned to salvage belongings such as boat engines and clothes from the wreckage of their homes after the tsunami destroyed fishing boats and damaged cafes, motels and restaurants up to 500 metres from the coastline.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Wellington said there were no reports of New Zealand casualties.

The US-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre rated the quake magnitude at 7.2. It said the quake would not trigger "a destructive widespread tsunami threat", but could cause some local tsunamis.

Indonesian authorities at first put the quake's magnitude at 5.5, unlikely to cause a tsunami given the epicentre's distance from shore and depth under the sea. They later upgraded the figure to 6.8.

A much touted international warning system involving sophisticated detection buoys, which officials had hoped could be in place around the Indian Ocean by this time, has stalled.

Asked how many tsunami buoys Indonesia has in operation since it launched the warning system plan last year, a government official assigned to the project said: "none".

The epicentre of yesterday's undersea quake was about 180km from the hardest hit spot on Java's southern coast.

Indonesia's 17,000 islands sprawl along a belt of intense volcanic and seismic activity, part of what is called the "Pacific Ring of Fire".

Earthquakes are frequent in Indonesia. In May, one near the city of Yogyakarta in central Java killed more than 5,700.

- REUTERS