the sudden quake
Powerful Indonesia quake kills at least 82JAKARTA: At least 82 people were killed Tuesday and hundreds injured in a 6.3-magnitude earthquake that rocked Indonesia's Sumatra island, officials said.
"The toll won't stop rising because the quake happened in a relatively populated region," said Damien Personnaz, a spokesman for children's agency UNICEF, who gave the figure of 82 dead.
Two UNICEF teams are in Sumatra monitoring the situation.
Hundreds of others were injured, Rosmini Savitri, an official in the disaster zone, said.
"The number of people injured has become 257," she said.
The quake hit at 10:49 am (0349 GMT), the US Geological Survey said, about 50 kilometres (30 miles) northeast of the West Sumatra capital Padang.
Tanah Datar, Solok and Padang were among the worst hit areas in Sumatra.
It appeared to have been followed by an aftershock almost as strong.
Hospitals in Solok and other areas on Sumatra were already working at full capacity and unable to treat more people, rescue coordinator Suryadi said via telephone from the disaster zone.
A spokesman for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had earlier said at least 70 were killed and scores injured.
He said the president may go to the disaster site and had ordered police, military, local authorities and government ministers to coordinate to do all they could to bring relief to the stricken areas.
Many people were trapped in collapsed buildings and there was no official information about the situation at the quake's epicentre because phone lines were down, Utjin Sudiana, West Sumatra's police chief, said.
"The epicentre is in Batusangkar but communication is disconnected from there so we don't know what the damage is," he said.
Solok mayor Samsurahim said there was widespread damage. "Several houses have collapsed. There are hundreds of victims," he told ElShinta radio, adding that a school had burnt to the ground after the quake.
i was concentrating on solving maths qns without realising that the earthquake has occurred. neither me n my fren who sat beside me felt any shakes when most of my other classmates could feel the slight vibration. hmm. initially i thot it was just someone who ran across the classrm n cause this great vibration but later after sch i found out frm others that an earthquake really happened cos my fren n i headed to this shopping mall to get some coloured papers n when we reached there, we were rather surprised to see so many ppl sitting n standing outside the building. me n my fren just walked into the building n found out that the shops were all closed! in the end we heard frm an auntie who told us that it was the security guard who had evacuated these ppl for fear that another quake will happen any moment. sighx.