The death toll from an earthquake that prompted a tsunami on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi has risen to 832, the national disaster mitigation agency has said, adding it assessed the affected area to be bigger than initially thought.
Many people were reported trapped in the rubble of buildings brought down in the magnitude 7.5 earthquake which struck on Friday and triggered tsunami waves as high as six metres (20 feet), agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told a news conference.
Amid the levelled trees, overturned cars, concertinaed homes and flotsam tossed up to 50 metres inland, survivors and rescuers struggled to come to grips with the scale of the disaster.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo arrived on the island of Sulawesi on Sunday to take stock of the situation.
Dozens of people were reported to be trapped in the rubble of a hotel and a mall in the city of Palu.
A young woman was pulled alive from the rubble of the Roa Roa Hotel, the news website Detik.com reported. The owner of the hotel said that up to 60 people were believed trapped in the rubble.
