|
The Associated Press
JAKARTA,
Indonesia - This year's monsoon rains inundated the island
of Sumatra on Monday, triggering dozens of landslides and
sweeping victims down raging rivers.
The
flooding has killed more than 100 people. With dozens unaccounted
for, rescuers feared the death toll would rise on the Indonesian
island.
"We
are looking for survivors, but we fear there will only be
corpses," student volunteer Nanang Farid Syam said
in the West Sumatran capital of Padang.
Relief
workers said blocked and flooded roads and continuing rains
were hampering rescue efforts.
"There
are reports of landslides everywhere," said Jual Effendi,
head of the province's rescue service. He said at least
90 people were feared dead in the region.
Effendi
said some food aid had reached the worst-affected areas
in the provinces of West Sumatra and Aceh on the northern
half of the island, about 625 miles northwest of the nation's
capital, Jakarta.
Landslides
in Indonesia are frequently caused by monsoon rain in areas
where land has been weakened by deforestation. Last month,
floods and landslides killed more than one hundred people
in the country's main island of Java.
The
Jakarta Post daily described the Sumatra flooding as the
worst since 1953.
Power
and telephone lines in Aceh's capital, Banda Aceh, have
been swept away, leaving thousands of people in the town
without electricity, the Kompas newspaper reported.
To the
south, large parts of Padang were under as much as 9 feet
of water, witnesses said. Eight counties were partially
inundated, and hundreds of acres of rice paddies had been
destroyed.
Many
of the victims were carried away by raging waters or buried
under mud and rock when sodden hillsides collapsed, said
Endar, an official of Indonesia's national search and rescue
agency.
Endar,
who like many Indonesians uses only one name, said 53 bodies
had been found in other parts of Sumatra and that 71 people
were still missing.
|
