Indonesia quake and tsunami death toll hits 1,200 as search for survivors goes on

Indonesian President Joko Widodo ordered more rescuers to be sent in to find victims of a devastating earthquake and tsunami on Tuesday as the official death toll rose above 1,200 and looting raised fears of growing lawlessness.

Most of the dead have been from the small city of Palu, 1,500 kilometresnortheast of Jakarta, but some remote areas have been cut off since Friday's 7.5 magnitude quake triggered tsunami waves, leading to fears the toll could soar.

"There are some main priorities that we must tackle and the first is to evacuate, find and save victims who've not yet been found," Widodo told a government meeting to co-ordinate disaster recovery efforts on the west coast of Sulawesi island.

See the devastation on Sulawesi island:

Quake's aftermath

6 years ago

Duration 0:55

Watch scenes of devastation wrought by Friday's earthquake and tsunami on Indonesia's Sulawesi island.

He said he had ordered the national search and rescue agency to send more police and soldiers into the affected districts, some cut off by destroyed roads, landslides and downed bridges.

The official death toll surged to 1,234, the national disaster agency said, while 799 people were severely injured.Agency spokesperson Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said the communities of Sigi and Balaroa hadnot been counted yet, meaning the toll is likely to rise.

Only two of the 122 foreigners in the area remained unaccounted forone from South Korea and the other from Belgium,Nugroho said.

Area hit 'extremely hard'

The Red Cross said the situation was "nightmarish" and reports from its workers venturing into one cut-off area, Donggala, a region of 300,000 people north of Palu and close to the epicentre, indicated it had been hit "extremely hard."

"We feel like we are stepchildren here because all the help is going to Palu," said Donggalaresident Mohamad Taufik, 38. "There are many young children here who are hungry and sick, but there is no milk or medicine."

The town's administrative head, Kasman Lassa, all but gave residents permission to take food but nothing else from stores.

"Everyone is hungry and they want to eat after several days of not eating," Lassa said on local TV. "We have anticipated it by providing food, rice, but it was not enough. There are many people here. So, on this issue, we cannot pressure them to hold much longer."

UN deputy spokespersonFarhan Haq said water remains the main issue because most of the area's water supply infrastructure has been damaged. The World Health Organization has warned that a lack of shelter and damaged water sanitation facilities could lead to outbreaks of communicable diseases.

Farhan said the Indonesian Ministry of Social Affairs has asked UNICEFto send social workers to the affected area to support children who are alone or became separated from their families.

Neighbourhoodslevelled

Four badly hit districts have a combined population of about 1.4 million.

In Palu, tsunami waves as high as six metressmashed into the beachfront, while hotels and shopping malls collapsed in ruins and some neighbourhoods were swallowed up by ground liquefaction.

Watch as liquefaction destroys one neighbourhood:

A Reuters news team saw ashop cleared by about 100 people, shouting, scrambling and fighting each other for items including clothes, toiletries, blankets and water.

Many people grabbed diapers while one man clutched a rice cooker as he headed for the door. Non-essential goods were scattered on the floor amid shards of broken glass.

At least 20 police were at the scene but did not intervene. The government has played down fears of looting, saying disaster victims could take essential goods and shops would be compensated later.

Indonesia is all too familiar with earthquakes and tsunamis. A quake in 2004 triggered a tsunami across the Indian Ocean that killed 226,000 people in 13 countries, including more than 120,000 in Indonesia.

The government has said it would accept offers of international aid, having shunned outside help earlier this year when an earthquake struck the island of Lombok.

On Tuesday, Canada announced $1.5 million in emergency assistance to support humanitarian organizations responding to the quake and tsunami's aftermath.

'Survivors trapped'

Rescuers in Palu held out hope they could still save lives.

"We suspect there are still some survivors trapped inside," the head of one rescue team, Agus Haryono, told Reuters at the collapsed seven-story Hotel Roa Roa.

About 50 people were believed to have been caught inside the hotel when it was brought down. About nine bodies have been recovered from the ruins and three rescued alive.

See one survivor's dramatic rescue:

Quake survivor rescued

6 years ago

Duration 0:40

A man is pulled from the rubble of a building, days after an earthquake and tsunami devastated the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.

Haryono pored over the hotel's blueprints, searching for possible pockets and a way through to them. A faint smell of decomposition hung in the air.

Power has yet to be restored and aftershocks have rattled jangled nerves.

A particular horror in several areas in and around Palu was liquefaction, which happens when soil shaken by an earthquake behaves like a liquid.

About 1,700 houses in one neighborhood were swallowed up, with hundreds of people believed buried, the national disaster agency said.

Before-and-after satellite pictures show a largely built-up neighbourhood just south of Palu's airport seemingly wiped clean of all signs of life by liquefaction.

Burying the dead

Elsewhere, on the outskirts of Palu, lorries brought 54 bodies to a mass grave dug in sandy soil.

Most of the bodies had not been claimed, a policeman said, but some relatives turned up to pay respects to loved ones at the 50-metretrench, where the smell of decomposition was overpowering.

More than 65,000 homes were damaged and more than 60,000 people have been displaced andin need emergency help, while thousands have been streaming out of stricken areas.

Commercial airlines have struggled to restore operations at Palu's damaged airport but military aircraft have taken some survivors out.

But thousands of people have been thronging the airport hoping for any flight out, and authorities have said a navy vessel capable of taking 1,000 people at a time would be deployed to help with evacuation efforts.

With files from CBCNews and The Associated Press