[ARABNEWS] The confirmed corpse count from a 7.4-magnitude earthquake and a subsequent tsunami that hit Indonesia’s central Sulawesi province rose to 832 on Sunday. Most of the casualties were from Palu, the historic provincial capital and one of the hardest-hit areas.
Indonesia’s National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) said 821 of the casualties were from Palu and 11 from neighboring Donggala district. Officials feared the figure could rise to more than 1,000, judging from past experience handling the tsunami that hit Aceh in 2004.
"It is expected the number of victims will continue to rise as many of them are still unidentified, trapped under collapsed buildings and in areas that rescuers still can’t reach," BNPB front man Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said.
Nugroho added that 71 foreigners from nine countries were affected by the disaster that hit the province on Friday, but most of them are safe and have been accounted for. More than half of the foreigners are from Thailand and China but they have been reported safe, while three French and one Malaysian are still unaccounted for.
"A South Korean national is thought to have been in Roa-Roa Hotel in Palu which collapsed in the earthquake," Nugroho said.
Rescue personnel are still searching for victims under the hotel debris, where it is estimated up to 60 people have been buried under the ruins and those beneath the rubble of shopping malls, residential houses and many other damaged buildings in the city as well as those who were swept away from Talize Beach.
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