Nearly 2,000 bodies have been recovered from Indonesia's disaster-ravaged Palu city, an official said Monday, as the search for victims ended at a hotel destroyed in the powerful earthquake and tsunami.

The death toll from the twin disaster on Sulawesi island that erased whole suburbs in Palu has reached 1,944, said local military spokesman M. Thohir.

"That number is expected to rise, because we have not received orders to halt the search for bodies," Thohir, who is also a member of the government's official Palu quake taskforce, told AFP.

Authorities have said as many as 5,000 are believed missing in two hard-hit areas since the September 28 disaster -- indicating far more may have perished than the current toll.

Hopes of finding anyone alive have faded and the search for survivors amid the wreckage has turned to gathering and accounting for the dead.

The disaster agency said the official search for the unaccounted would continue until October 11 at which point they would be listed as missing, presumed dead.

But rescuers called off the search Monday at Hotel Roa-Roa, which was reduced to a tangled mess of twisted rebar and smashed concrete by the force of the quake.

The hotel emerged as an early focus of efforts to extract survivors, with seven people pulled alive from its mangled ruins in the immediate aftermath.

But nobody else was saved as the days passed, and optimism faded as corpses surfaced from the wreckage.

"The SAR (search and rescue) operation at Hotel Roa-Roa has ended, because we have searched the entire hotel and have not found any more victims," Bambang Suryo, SAR field director in Palu, told AFP.

Agus Haryono, another SAR official at the scene who confirmed the search was off, said 27 bodies were recovered from the hotel including three pulled from the debris Sunday.

Among the confirmed dead were five paragliders in Palu for a competition, including an Asian Games athlete and a South Korean, the only known foreign victim in the disaster.

Authorities believed the 80-room hotel was near capacity when the district was ravaged by a 7.5 magnitude quake and tsunami and estimated 50 to 60 people could be trapped inside.

- Mass graves -

Rescuers have struggled to extract bodies from the wreckage of Palu, a job made worse as mud hardens and bodies decompose in the tropical heat.

The government has said some flattened areas will be declared as mass graves, and left untouched.

Balaroa resident Sarjono agreed with sealing off the obliterated neighbourhood where vast numbers of bodies are believed trapped beneath the ruins.

"But only if they help us relocate elsewhere. If they don't, where will we live?" the 50-year-old told AFP near the debris of his former home.

Gopal, whose aunt and uncle were missing in Balaroa, picked through wreckage knowing just days were left to find his loved ones.

"Even if they (search teams) stop looking, we will still try to find them ourselves," said the 40-year-old who, like many Indonesians, goes by one name.

"When we can no longer do it ourselves, we leave it to Allah."

Excavators and rescuers combed Balaroa on Monday, where a massive government housing complex was all but swallowed up by the disaster.

Officials say as many as 5,000 people were feared buried at Balaroa and Petobo, another decimated community.

Petobo, a cluster of villages, was subsumed when vibrations from the 7.5-magnitude quake turned soil to quicksand -- a process known as liquefaction.

Relief efforts have escalated to assist 200,000 people in desperate need. Food and clean water remain in short supply, and many are dependent entirely on handouts to survive.

Helicopters have been running supply drops to more isolated communities outside Palu, where the full extent of the damage is still not entirely clear.

The Red Cross said Monday it had treated more than 1,800 people at clinics and administered first aid to a similar number in the immediate disaster zone.

Indonesia sits along the world's most tectonically active region, and its 260 million people are vulnerable to earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions.

Missing toll soars to 5,000 in engulfed Indonesia quake neighbourhoods
Palu, Indonesia (AFP) Oct 7, 2018 - The number of people believed missing from the quake and tsunami that struck Indonesia's Palu city has soared to 5,000, an official said Sunday, an indication that far more may have perished in the twin disaster than the current toll.

Indonesia's disaster agency say they have recovered 1,763 bodies so far from the 7.5-magnitude and subsequent tsunami that struck Sulawesi on September 28.

But there are fears that two of the hardest-hit neighbourhoods in Palu -- Petobo and Balaroa -- could contain thousands more victims, swallowed up by ground that engulfed whole communities in a process known as liquefaction.

"Based on reports from the (village) heads of Balaroa and Petobo, there are about 5,000 people who have not been found," agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told reporters Sunday.

"Nevertheless, officials there are still trying to confirm this and are gathering data. It is not easy to obtain the exact number of those trapped by landslides, or liquefaction, or mud."

Nugroho said the search for the unaccounted would continue until October 11, at which point they would be listed as missing, presumed dead.

The figure drastically increases the estimates for those who disappeared when the disaster struck 10 days ago. Officials had initially predicted some 1,000 people were buried beneath the ruins of Palu.

But the latest tally speaks to the considerable destruction in the worst-hit areas of Petobo and Balaroa as the picture on the ground has become clearer.

- Wiped out -

Petobo, a cluster of villages in Palu, was virtually wiped out by the powerful quake and wall of water that devastated Palu.

Much of it was sucked whole into the ground as the vibrations from the quake turned soil to quicksand.

It was feared that beneath the crumbled rooftops and twisted rebar, a vast number of bodies remain entombed.

In Balaroa, a massive government housing complex was also subsumed by the quake and rescuers have struggled to extract bodies from the tangled mess in the aftermath of the disaster.

Hopes of finding anyone alive have faded, as the search for survivors morphs into a grim gathering and accounting of the dead.

"This is day ten. It would be a miracle to actually find someone still alive," Muhammad Syaugi, the head of Indonesia's search and rescue agency told AFP on Sunday.

The government has been considering declaring those communities flattened in Palu as mass graves, and leaving them untouched.

Muhlis, whose uncle was still missing in Balaroa, said the missing and dead should be honoured respectfully.

"There should be a monument here to make people aware, so that our grandchildren will know this disaster happened in 2018," said Muhlis, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.

- 'Great need' -

The grim news comes as relief efforts were ramped up to reach 200,000 people in desperate of help after days of delays.

Looters ransacked shops in the aftermath of the disaster more than a week ago, as food and water ran dry and convoys bringing life-saving relief were slow to arrive.

But the trickle of international aid to Palu and local efforts to help the survivors have accelerated in recent days.

Planeloads of supplies were landing with increasing frequency in Palu, where daisy chains of troops unloaded supplies directly onto trucks or helicopters.

More than 82,000 military and civilian personnel, as well as volunteers, are on the ground while Indonesian army choppers are undertaking supply runs to remote areas blocked off by the disaster.

"They are in great need because the road is cut off and it's accessible only by air", Second Lieutenant Reinaldo Apri told AFP after piloting a helicopter to rugged Lindu district, some 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of Palu.

Hercules planes carrying tonnes of donations from Australia and the United States reached Palu on Sunday morning, as did a plane chartered by Save the Children and another carrying a South African medical team.

Teams of Indonesian Red Cross workers set up warehouses and fanned out to distribute supplies across the region.

But relief workers face a monumental task ahead.

The tens of thousands left homeless by the disaster are scattered across Palu and beyond, many squatting outside their ruined homes or bunkered down in makeshift camps and entirely dependent on handouts to survive.

"There is nowhere else to get food, nowhere is open," said 18-year-old Sela Fauziah in Palu's central market, where she queued with hundreds for essential food items being distributed by soldiers.

Things are even more desperate in remoter areas.

"I am coming to Palu to report that we need tents, because 95 percent of our village has been destroyed," said Simsom Mudju from Lindu, who clambered aboard the chopper to tell the outside world about his marooned community's plight.

Related Links
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New Zealand earthquake study highlights influence of megathrust
Washington (UPI) Oct 2, 2018
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