Heavy rains hampered search teams Sunday in the hills of western Indonesia where hundreds of people were buried alive in landslides triggered by a massive earthquake that wiped out four villages.
Officials said at least 644 people were buried and presumed dead in the hillside villages in Padang Pariaman district on the western coast of Sumatra island. Aid and rescue efforts have been concentrated in the region's capital, Padang, a coastal city of 900,000 people where several tall buildings collapsed and hundreds died.
But the quake was equally devastating in Pariaman, where entire hillsides were shaken loose, sending down a cascade of mud, rocks and trees. Hordes of aid workers, military personnel, police and volunteers carrying heavy earth-moving equipment finally arrived Sunday to relieve residents who had been digging for corpses with their bare hands.
Women wept silently as bodies were placed in bright yellow bags. Vice President Jusuf Kalla said there was little hope of finding anyone alive. "We can be sure that they are dead. So now we are waiting for burials," he told reporters.
There is no clear word on the total death toll from Wednesday's 7.6-magnitude quake. The United Nations put the toll at 1,100. The government earlier said 715 were dead and 3,000 missing. But it revised the figure Sunday to say 603 people are confirmed dead and 960 missing, presumed dead. The missing include the people buried in the landslides.
Where the four villages once stood in Pariaman, there was only mud and broken palm trees - the mountainsides appeared gouged bare as if by a gigantic backhoe. The villages "were sucked 30 meters deep into the earth," said Rustam Pakaya, the head of Indonesia's Health Ministry crisis center. "Even the mosque's minaret, taller than 20 meters, disappeared."
Deliveries came on C-130 cargo planes from the United States, Russia and Australia. Japanese, Swiss, South Korean and Malaysian search and rescue teams scoured the debris. Tens of millions of dollars in donations came from more than a dozen countries to supplement $400 million the Indonesian government said it would spend over the next two months.

Hürriyet.