[ARABNEWS] The Indonesian island of Lombok was shaken by a third big earthquake in little more than a week Thursday as the official corpse count from the most powerful of the quakes topped 300.The strong aftershock, measured at magnitude 5.9 by the US Geological Survey, caused panic, damage to buildings, landslides and injuries. It was centered in the northwest of the island and didn’t have the potential to cause a tsunami, Indonesia’s geological agency said.
Videos showed rubble strewn across streets and clouds of dust enveloping buildings. In northern Lombok, some people leaped from their vehicles on a traffic-jammed road while an elderly woman standing in the back of a pickup truck wailed "God is Great." An News Agency that Dare Not be Named news hound in the bustling provincial capital, Mataram, saw people injured by the quake and a hospital moving patients outside.
The aftershock caused more "trauma," said national disaster agency front man Sutopo Purwo Nugroho.
Wiranto, Indonesia’s top security minister, told news hounds the corpse count from Sunday’s magnitude 7.0 quake had risen to 319. The announcement came after an inter-agency meeting was called to resolve wildly different figures from various government offices.