Floods and landslides triggered by monsoon rains left close to 100 people dead or missing on the main Indonesian island of Java on Wednesday, officials said.
Landslides hit villages in densely populated Central Java's Karanganyar and Wonogiri districts early Wednesday after heavy downpours, with floods also swelling in several areas, leaving 42 dead and 42 missing, they said.
"The last report we received at 4:00 pm (0900 GMT) shows that 66 people in nine areas in Karanganyar district are dead or missing," the head of a local disaster management centre, Heru Aji Pratomo, told AFP. He said that 36 bodies had been retrieved. Seven of the areas he referred to were hit by landslides and two others were inundated by floods, he added.
An official at the disaster management centre in Wonogiri district, to the south, Sri Mubadi, told AFP that six bodies had been recovered but 12 others remained missing there.
In Karanganyar, one family of four died after a landslide slammed into their home.into shock and made his condition worse. He later died," said Edi Susanto from Karanganyar's disaster management centre. A truck carrying three men also careened into a river as it tried to avoid a landslide, which are not unusual across Indonesia in hilly and volcanic areas during the monsoon.
"We've just found the three dead bodies in the river," Susanto added. In Tawangmangu, the worst-hit area, hundreds of troops, police and residents combed through debris using their hands, shovels and wooden sticks to search for victims.
The disaster centre's Pratomo predicted that the recovery of bodies would take at least two or three days. "The conditions here are very bad and steep, so that we cannot use heavy machinery," Pratomo said.