The emergency services report 151 missing, several hundred injured and 13,000 displaced. The president, Joko Widodo, has promised to compensate the victims.
mo12345lemonde with reuters
The always provisional assessment of the earthquake which occurred on Monday November 21 in the Indonesian province of Western Java is now 268 dead and several hundred wounded, according to the emergency services. The governor of the province, who is the most populous in the archipelago, had reported the day before 162 killed.
The epicenter of the 5.6 magnitude shock was located near Cianjur, a city of 175,000 of inhabitants. The latest assessment, of an unprecedented magnitude since 2018 in Indonesia, was communicated by the director of the National Catastrophe Management Agency, during a press conference. “Our priority is the research and the evacuation of victims,” he insisted, reporting 151 missing.
The Indonesian president, Joko Widodo, promised to compensate the victims during a visit to the scene. More than 2,000 dwellings have suffered damage and 13,000 people were transported to evacuation centers, according to the governor. More than 60 aftershocks have been counted since the first shock, which occurred around 1:20 p.m. Local time.
According to the national geology agency, the nature of the region of the region, friable volcanic deposits of the quaternary have “accentuated the” seismic “shocks created by an active flaw.
Located on the Pacific “Fire Belt”, where tectonic plates meet, Indonesia is regularly confronted with earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. In January 2021, an earthquake of magnitude 6.2 left more than 100 dead on the island of Celebes.