(BBC News) Many of those killed and injured in an earthquake on the Indonesian island of Java were children, rescuers say, as the death toll rises to 268.
Aprizal Mulyadi, 14, was at school when the quake hit, saying he was trapped after “the room collapsed and my legs were buried under the rubble.”
He said he was pulled to safety by his friend Zulfikar, who later died after himself becoming trapped.
More than 1,000 people were wounded, officials say.
In its latest announcements on Tuesday, the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) added that 151 people were still missing.
It also said that 22,000 houses had been damaged, and that more than 58,000 people had taken shelter in several locations in the region.
The 5.6-magnitude quake struck a mountainous region on Monday, causing landslides that buried entire villages near the West Java town of Cianjur.
Victims were crushed or trapped after walls and roofs caved in. “It all happened so fast,” Aprizal told AFP news agency.
A representative of the National Search and Rescue Agency confirmed that many of the dead were young people.
“Most of the casualties are children because at 1 p.m., they were still at school,” said Henri Alfiandi.
The earthquake, which struck at a shallow depth of 10 km, was followed by dozens of aftershocks that caused more damage as poorly built homes collapsed.
President Joko Widodo visited the remote disaster zone on Tuesday.
“My instruction is to prioritise evacuating victims that are still trapped under rubble,” he said.
Hundreds of police and other rescuers are taking part in the rescue effort.
Earthquakes are common in Indonesia, which sits on the “ring of fire” area of tectonic activity in the Pacific.
The country has a history of devastating tremors and tsunamis. More than 2,000 people were killed in a 2018 earthquake on the island of Sulawesi.
