Quake-flattened villages to be left as mass graves

More bodies were unearthed from the earthquake-and-tsunami-ravaged Indonesian city of Palu yesterday, as authorities move closer to calling off the search for the dead trapped under flattened communities and declaring them mass graves.

Officials said the death toll had climbed to 1,649 with more than a thousand feared still missing in the seaside city on Sulawesi island. More than 82,000 military and civilian personnel, as well as volunteers, have descended on the devastated city, where relief groups say clean water and medical supplies are in short supply.

After days of delays, international aid has slowly begun trickling into the disaster zone where the UN says almost 200,000 people need humanitarian assistance. But hopes of finding anyone alive a full eight days later have all but faded, as the search for survivors morphs into a grim gathering of the dead. 

At the massive Balaroa government housing complex, where the sheer force of the quake turned the earth temporarily to mush, soldiers wearing masks to ward off the stench of death clambered over the giant mounds of mud, brick, and cement. Vast numbers of decomposing bodies could still be buried beneath this once-thriving neighbourhood, the search and rescue agency said.