TEHRAN, August 7 -Terrified holidaymakers rushed for boats and planes to leave Indonesia's Lombok Island Tuesday after it suffered a second deadly quake within a week, as rescuers scrambled to reach remote areas where survivors are in urgent need of food and shelter.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - The shallow 6.9-magnitude quake killed at least 105 people and destroyed thousands of buildings in Lombok on Sunday, just days after another deadly tremor surged through the holiday island and killed 17.
Rescuers on Tuesday resumed the desperate search for survivors, and to recover the bodies of victims in the rubble of houses, mosques and schools destroyed in the latest disaster.
More than 20,000 people are believed to have been made homeless on Lombok, with 236 severely injured, and authorities have appealed for more medical personnel and basic supplies.
The tremor struck as evening prayers were being held across the Muslim-majority island.
Emergency crews using heavy equipment to search through a collapsed mosque in northern Lombok found three bodies but also managed to pull one man alive from the twisted wreckage.
Video posted online by disaster officials showed the man sobbing with relief as one rescuer told him: "You're safe sir, you're safe."
Authorities said they feared the mosque -- now educed to a pile of concrete and metal bars, its towering green dome folded in on itself -- had been filled with worshipers.
"We estimate there are still more victims because we found many sandals in front of the mosque," national disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told reporters.
He said major building collapses had also taken place at a "health clinic, government offices and other public facilities."
(Source: AFP)
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