The death toll from an earthquake and tsunami on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island has risen to 1,234, from 844.
A 7.5 magnitude earthquake on Friday triggered tsunami waves as high as six metres, which swept ashore at the small city of Palu, on the west coast of Sulawesi.
A total of 215 aftershocks have stricken the province so far.
Rescuers have yet to reach many affected areas leading to fears the death toll would rise significantly.
The bodies of 34 students were found on Tuesday in a church in Sulawesi that was engulfed in a mudslide. They were among a group of 86 students reported missing from a Bible camp in the Jonooge Church Training Centre. The whereabouts the other 52 students are not yet known.
Indonesia Red Cross spokeswoman Aulia Arriani said the search and rescue missions are up against arduous conditions.
“The most challenging problem is travelling in the mud as much as 1.5 hours by foot while carrying the bodies to an ambulance,” she said.
Authorities struggled this week to find heavy machinery in a fight against time to unearth remaining survivors. Thousands are also in urgent need of food, water and medical supplies.
Rescue workers are struggling to provide emergency relief in Sulawesi where looting and chaos have reportedly erupted in the wake of the disaster.
Nearly 50,000 people have been displaced from Palu alone, and hospitals on the tropical island are overwhelmed.
A representative of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) called the situation “nightmarish.”
Many have blamed the shortfalls of the early-warning system deployed by the Indonesian government for the loss of life in Palu, Sulawesi.
National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said Indonesia had been having problems installing real-time tsunami detection equipment since 2012.
“No tsunami detection buoys are in operation in our country right now, which are necessary to detect such waves early.
“Most of them are broken because of, for example, vandalism,” Sutopo said, adding that the procurement of such equipment could run up against budgeting constraints.
Tsunami expert, Abdul Muhari, said Indonesia lagged behind other countries in building and maintaining a tsunami detection system.
He said countries like Japan, which frequently deals with earthquakes and tsunamis, had installed and were operating more equipment to detect earthquakes than Indonesia.
For example, there would be one to five seismographs placed in a subdistrict as well as layers of tsunami detector buoys in its waters.
“Indonesia, by contrast, only operates a limited amount of equipment.”