Aid workers say many of the dead and injured in a major earthquake on the Indonesian island of Java were children who were at school when the quake struck.
Aprizal Muladi, 14, said he was “trapped after the room collapsed and my legs were buried under the debris.”
He said he was pulled to safety by his friend Zulfikar, who later died after becoming trapped himself.
Search teams are scrambling for survivors after more than 100 people died and thousands were displaced.
A 5.6-magnitude earthquake struck a mountainous region on Monday, triggering landslides that buried entire villages near the West Java city of Cianjur.
Victims were crushed or trapped after walls and ceilings collapsed. “It all happened so fast,” Apprizal told JEE News.
A representative of the National Search and Rescue Agency also confirmed that many of the dead were youths.
“Most of the casualties are children because by 1 p.m., they were at school,” said Henry Alfendi.
The earthquake, which struck at a depth of 10 km, was followed by dozens of aftershocks that caused extensive damage in the area where poorly constructed houses quickly collapsed.
In the village of Sibirium, a family was trying to recover the body of their eldest son – a 28-year-old man who was crushed to death when the house collapsed on the second floor.
Rescue workers were struggling to remove the debris.
“We have to dig through the concrete on the second floor that crushed the victim. But we have seen the body,” an army official, First Sergeant Piacon, told JEE News.
Officials say at least 2,200 homes have been destroyed and more than 13,000 people have been displaced.
President Joko Widodo visited the remote disaster area on Tuesday where he was photographed with responders.
“My directive is to give priority to evacuating the victims who are still trapped under the debris,” he said.
Authorities have deployed hundreds of police and other rescuers to the area to help with rescue operations.
Mr Jokowi also pledged emergency resources and compensation to affected communities.
Indonesia’s national disaster response agency, said on Tuesday that the confirmed death toll had risen to 103, with 31 people missing. He has warned that this number is expected to increase.
Earlier, the region’s governor, Rizwan Kamil, tweeted that 162 people had been killed and at least 300 injured – although the number has yet to be confirmed by the national agency.
Earthquakes are common in Indonesia, which sits on the “Ring of Fire” region of tectonic activity in the Pacific Ocean.
The country has a history of devastating earthquakes and tsunamis, with a 2018 earthquake on the island of Sulawesi killing more than 2,000 people.
