The death toll from a magnitude 6.9 Lombok earthquake on Sunday has risen to 259 following a secondary quake amid rescue efforts.
On Thursday an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.2 hit Indonesia’s Lombok island, less than a week after a tremor that is believed to have killed hundreds of people.
The latest tremor struck just after midday, sending panicked residents into the streets. According to reports by the Guardian, from Indonesia’s meteorology agency, the epicentre of the quake was 6km north-west of the island with a depth of 12km.
The region has been hit by more than 350 aftershocks, the worst of which struck on Thursday. This as rescue workers are still sifting through rubble and trying to get aid to survivors of the earlier, larger quake.
Residents in the city of Mataram and north Lombok, the areas hardest hit this past week, panicked after Thursday’s strong tremor, pouring out of their homes and evacuation posts. “There was one person who fell from the stairs because the tremor shook the stairs when they tried to get out of the building,” Rangga, one local resident in central Lombok, told CNN Indonesia.
Officials said of the latest death toll: “This number will continue increasing as rescue teams continue to find victims under collapsed buildings,” the BBC reports.
Indonesia’s chief security minister had earlier said 319 people had died, while local media have reported figures as high as 347. But national disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told the BBC that only 259 deaths had been verified.
The Red Cross said the initial quake was “exceptionally destructive”, and that some villages had “completely collapsed”, said a Red Cross official in Lombok, Christopher Rassi. The government has confirmed that more than 1400 people were injured and more than 270,000 displaced.
