Sharjah 24 – AFP: Indonesian authorities deployed heavy machinery, helicopters and thousands of personnel Thursday in a desperate effort to locate dozens trapped in rubble by an earthquake that killed 272 people, as hopes of finding survivors faded.
Some have been pulled alive from the hulk of twisted metal and concrete in dramatic rescues in the town of Cianjur in West Java, including a six-year-old boy who spent two days under the wreckage without food or water.
Officials said 39 people were still missing and believed trapped, including a seven-year-old girl, as rescue efforts were delayed by hammering rains and aftershocks.
But the rescue of the young boy Azka alive, captured on video, gave relatives and rescuers some hope.
In the worst-hit district of Cugenang, scores of rescue workers drilled on Thursday through big slabs of concrete and removed roof tiles at a destroyed house where they believed a young girl was buried. Her distraught mother watched on as they worked.
Other rescuers used digging tools, hammers and their bare hands to clear the debris in the delicate mission to find seven-year-old Cika.
Authorities later suspended the search for Cika for the evening, saying they would resume the rescue effort on Friday.
The death toll from Monday's earthquake was expected to rise further with around 2,000 people wounded, some of them critically, and at least two villages still cut off.
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