Indonesian villages reduced to mass graves
INDONESIA: Standing next to swathes of mud and debris that was once
the Indonesian village of Cumanak, exhausted farmer Muchtar says he is
haunted by the faces of his dead neighbours.
One of the few survivors after a major earthquake dislodged hillsides
around four adjacent villages on Sumatra island a week ago, the
62-year-old has been called upon to identify the bodies being plucked
one-by-one from the earth.
But he has had enough.
“I’m too traumatised, I can’t do it anymore,” Muchtar, a
weather-beaten rice farmer, told AFP, his voice halting as he spoke.
“The families keep asking me, but I can’t help. I’m too scared,” he
said, adding that only five people out of one extended family of 21 had
survived.
Police in the village believe around 100 people there perished in the
disaster triggered by last Wednesday’s 7.6-magnitude earthquake.
In all the villages in this area, some 30 kilometres (19 miles) east
of the town of Pariaman, up to 400 are believed to have died, according
to local officials.
The actual number is likely to never be known. CUMANAK, Wednesday,
AFP
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