Hundreds dead after tsunami-quake strikes Indonesia

A powerful earthquake that sent a tsunami barrelling into the Indonesian island of Sulawesi has killed nearly 400 people, the national disaster agency said on Saturday. 

The official death toll so far stands at 384, all of them in the tsunami-struck city of Palu, but Indonesia's disaster agency warned the toll was likely to rise.

Some 540 people were badly injured, it added.

In the city - home to around 350,000 people - partially covered bodies lay on the ground near the shore, the day after tsunami waves 1.5 metres came ashore.

There were also concerns over the whereabouts of hundreds of people preparing for a beach festival that had been due to start on Friday evening, the disaster agency said.

Hospitals were overwhelmed by the influx of injured, with many people being treated in the open air, while other survivors helped to retrieve the remains of those who died.

The tsunami was triggered by a strong quake that brought down buildings and sent locals fleeing for higher ground as a churning wall of water crashed into Palu, where there were widespread power blackouts.

Dramatic video footage captured from the top floor of a parking ramp in Palu, nearly 50 miles from the quake's epicentre, showed waves bring down several buildings and inundate a large mosque.

The shallow 7.5 magnitude tremor was more powerful than a series of quakes that killed hundreds on the Indonesian island of Lombok in July and August.

Indonesian president Joko Widodo said the military was being called in to the disaster-struck region to help search-and-rescue teams get to victims and find bodies. 

The quake hit just off central Sulawesi at a depth of 6 miles just before 1100 GMT - early evening in Sulawesi - the US Geological Survey said. Such shallow quakes tend to be more destructive.

Indonesia is one of the most disaster-prone nations on earth.

It lies on the Pacific "Ring of Fire", where tectonic plates collide and many of the world's volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur.

Earlier this year, a series of powerful quakes hit Lombok, killing more than 550 people on the holiday island and neighbouring Sumbawa.

Indonesia has been hit by a string of other deadly quakes including a devastating 9.1 magnitude tremor that struck off the coast of Sumatra in December 2004.

That Boxing Day quake triggered a tsunami that killed 220,000 throughout the region, including 168,000 in Indonesia.

In 2010, about 430 were killed when a huge quake sparked a tsunami off the coast of Sumatra, while more than 600 were killed in a quake-tsunami disaster on Java island.

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