"Sixty-five people have been found dead and many more are still missing," said First Brigadier Syahdan of the police station in Kuala district.

Officials and witnesses said five of the dead were foreigners, including two Singaporeans.

A river swollen by a flash flood smashed through resort cottages at Bohorok late Sunday following hours of heavy rain.

"It happened so fast. Only in 20 minutes the water had washed away houses and cottages," said resident Safaruddin Nasution.

Eddi Sofian, a provincial spokesman, told Detikcom online news service that five of the dead were foreigners but he gave no nationalities.

The town is on the eastern fringes of the Gunung Leuser national park, 96 km (60 miles) northwest of Medan city.

It is the home of a famed orang-utan refuge, which is popular with tourists who also go trekking and white-water rafting.

"I saw almost all the resort places swept away by the flood," said a local journalist who visited the scene.

Two buses and dozens of cars were also damaged after being hit by debris and seven bridges were destroyed, he told AFP.

Rescue workers stacked bodies outside a mosque, the journalist said. Two Singaporeans were among the dead, he said.

The flooded river "wiped out at least ten cottages" in the area, said an employee of Bukit Lawang Cottages which fronts the river.

"Only this hotel and the Batumandi hotel are saved," the employee told AFP by telephone.

"The flood last night was so sudden. It was already flooded at 8 pm but at 9.30 the water was many times higher, engulfing all houses," said another worker at Bukit Lawang Cottages, Mega Sembiring.

"We are here waiting to be moved," he said.

The official Antara news agency said 72 people were swept away and many phone lines were down. About 43,000 people live in the Bohorok district.

Severe flooding, much of it blamed on rampant deforestation, is not unusual during Indonesia's rainy season.

But the confirmed death toll at Bohorok is almost as heavy as that from two months of floods which hit the capital Jakarta in January and February last year.

TERRA.WIRE