Indonesia Tsunami toll heads for 300, search on

Pangandaran (Indonesia), Jul 18: The death toll rose swiftly toward 300 today after a strong undersea earthquake triggered a Tsunami that smashed into fishing villages and resorts on Indonesia's Java island.

At least four non-Indonesians were among the dead, 131 people were missing and 34,013 people were displaced, officials said.

No warnings had been reported ahead of the waves, which struck late yesterday afternoon, 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.

''When the waves came, I heard people screaming and then I heard something like a plane about to crash nearby and I just ran,'' Uli Sutarli, a plantation worker who was on hard-hit Pangandaran beach, told Reuters.

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.

Officials said at least 273 people were killed.

Vice President Jusuf Kalla said the death toll was expected to climb.

''In a tsunami, it is possible that the number will increase, especially those who are missing or who have been washed away to the sea,'' he told Elshinta radio.

One of the four dead foreigners was a Dutch national, Ciamis regency-based health department officer Yuyun Ruhiyat told Reuters.

She had no information about the other three.

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.

No other country reported casualties or damage from yesterday's tsunami.

Anxious survivors lifted yellow sheets covering dozens of bodies lining a hospital floor as they searched for relatives in Pangandaran, which bore the brunt of the damage. One man collapsed over the corpse of a small child, her body streaked with mud, alongside lines of bodies under plastic sheets in a makeshift morgue.

Some of the homeless were using floormats and sheets of plastic to make temporary shelters on hillsides today. Relief agencies had yet to supply tents in the Pangandaran area, although truckloads of aid were beginning to arrive.

Imad Roimad, a 32 year-old father of two children, told Reuters his family was safe, but his home was smashed, adding: ''Everything is destroyed. I was a worker. Now, I'm confused. I want to go home but I don't know where.'' A Belgian tourist in Pangandaran, a popular spot for surfers with many small hotels on the beach, 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 he grabbed onto a cooler and rode the wave into a nearby hotel.

The U S Geological Survey rated the undersea quake's magnitude at 7.7. with its epicentre about 180 kms off the hardest hit spot on Java's southern coast.

The U S -based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the quake would not trigger ''a destructive widespread tsunami threat'', but could cause some local tsunamis.

No tsunami warning system has been set up for the southern coast of Java. An Indonesian warning system was supposed to be up and running by now after the 2004 tsunami, the worst on record, but it has stalled.

Asked how many tsunami buoys Indonesia has in operation since it launched a first stage of its warning system off the coast of Aceh in northern Sumatra last year, a government official assigned to the project said: ''none''.

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

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