Foreign News
Thousands await aid after deadly Indonesia quake as rescue work under way
Thousands of people are waiting for aid in the eastern Indonesia region hit by a powerful earthquake that killed dozens of people, as rescuers combed through collapsed buildings in search of people trapped beneath the rubble.
Late on Monday, the death toll was raised from 54 to 68, said Berton SP Panjaitan, an official at Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency, adding that more than 200 have been injured.
Many residents on Flores island in East Nusa Tenggara province spent Monday searching for loved ones and waiting for aid to arrive in communities still cut off by the magnitude 7.7 earthquake.
During Indonesia’s Independence Day ceremony in the capital, Jakarta, President Prabowo Subianto asked participants to pray for people affected by disasters in East Nusa Tenggara and other parts of the country while leading a nationwide moment of silence honouring the nation’s independence heroes.
More than 1,300 homes were damaged when the quake struck East Nusa Tenggara on Saturday. Nearly 250 were destroyed on Flores alone. Dozens of public buildings, including educational and health facilities as well as government offices, were also affected.
The province’s governor declared a 14-day state of emergency on Sunday.
About 12,800 people were unable to return to their homes by Monday morning and were dispersed among temporary shelters in several towns on Flores, Berton Suar Pelita Panjaitan, spokesman for Indonesia’s BNPB national disaster agency, told the AFP news agency.
Thousands of people on Flores camped outside collapsed homes under tarpaulin tents overnight into Monday, sleeping outside because of the danger of more aftershocks.
“Our houses are no longer liveable because many have collapsed and are full of cracks, so we can’t go inside any more,” Mbay resident Junaidin, 32, told AFP outside his self-made tent that was sleeping about 30 people.
For many residents, the disaster revived painful memories of a powerful earthquake and tsunami that struck Flores in 1992, killing about 2,500 people.
“We’re on our own here,” said Junaidin, who like many Indonesians has one name. He expressed frustration with a perceived lag in the arrival of aid.
“As for help from the government, there hasn’t been any – no tents, no medicine, no food, no drinking water, nothing,” Junaidin said.
The Indonesian air force said it was bringing 13 tonnes of emergency aid airlifted in two Hercules transport planes and a Boeing.
It was also deploying helicopters to bring emergency supplies directly to survivors in isolated communities, the Antara state news agency quoted the commander of El Tari airbase in Kupang on Timor island as saying. The aid included food, clothes, clean water and emergency medical equipment.
The military has deployed personnel to help with distribution in key hubs.
Rescuers were combing the stricken area for victims despite not receiving any reports about missing people, search and rescue official Fathur Rahman told AFP on Monday.
Indonesia will also build an emergency field hospital in several areas to treat the injured, Deputy Health Minister Benjamin Paulus Octavianus said.
Al Jazeera’s Jessica Washington, reporting from Ruteng in East Nusa Tenggara, said medical staff there had to quickly assemble a tent hospital after the hospital was damaged.
While doctors said they have a sufficient supply of medicine, they weren’t able to get to essential equipment that allows them to perform blood tests and X-rays, which means they are “having to treat patients in very difficult conditions”, Washington said.
Many elderly patients “are being exposed to the intense heat of the daytime” and the “rather cold” evening temperatures, which complicates doctors’ ability to treat them, Washington added.
Indonesia experiences frequent earthquakes due to its location along the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an arc of intense seismic activity stretching from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.
A magnitude 9.1 tremor in 2004 struck off the coast of Sumatra and triggered a tsunami that killed 220,000 throughout the region, about 170,000 of them in Indonesia.
It was one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history.
[Aljazeera]
US authorities have found debris from a medical transport aircraft that went missing with six people on board.
The Federal Aviation Administration told the BBC it had lost contact with the Gulfstream G-100 plane just after 01:00 local time (05:00 GMT) on Saturday, while it was travelling from Bermuda to Boston, Massachusetts.
The search for survivors continues off the coast of Nantucket, a Massachusetts island, the US Coast Guard said.
Authorities have notified the next of kin of those on the flight, four Canadian nationals and two Bermudian nationals.
“Search crews located a debris field confirmed to be from the aircraft off the coast of Nantucket,” the US Coast Guard said in an update on Saturday night. It added that ships, helicopters and planes were involved in searches that would through continue the night.
The plane departed from Bermuda’s L.F. Wade International Airport at 23:40 local time, according to flight data from FlightAware, and was due to land at Boston’s Logan International at 01:30 EDT (05:30 GMT).
According to the tail number released by the Coast Guard, the plane belonged to Latitude Air Ambulances, a company that provides international medical flights for patients returning home.
Among those on board were two pilots and two medical staff, both Canadian, Clarence Togeretz, director of flight operations at Latitude, told CBC News.
The crew flew to Bermuda to collect a patient and their relative, who are not Canadian, Togeretz said.
FlightAware’s tracker shows the aircraft significantly dropped in altitude before its communications went dark, plummeting from around 7,300m (24,000ft) to 3,300m (11,000ft).
Radio transmissions shows trouble with communications between the air traffic controller and the pilot, the Boston Globe reported based on transmissions provided by LiveATC.net.
“You’re coming in blind? Is that what you said?,” the air traffic controller asked. “Are you declaring an emergency, or no?”
The pilot’s response was inaudible.
“You’re coming in a little weak so I didn’t hear what your response was, if you were declaring an emergency or not,” the air traffic controller said, according to the Globe.
The air traffic controller later confirmed the pilot had declared an emergency.
An area fire dispatcher asked emergency crews just after 01:00 EDT to prepare to meet a plane with an “electrical issue”.
The dispatcher later said “the aircraft has lost radio and radar”.
The Coast Guard said it would provide an update on Sunday morning local time.
[BBC]
A car has crashed into a crowd of rugby league supporters in the eastern Australian city of Newcastle, injuring 10 people, including three children.
New South Wales police said on Saturday that two of the injured – a five-year-old girl and a 67-year-old man – were in a critical condition and the other eight were in stable condition in hospital.
Police said they had arrested the 18-year-old man driving the vehicle and were investigating what happened. They said the crash was not believed to be related to “terrorism”.
The crowd had gathered to farewell the local rugby league side, the Newcastle Knights, ahead of their grand final against the Sydney Roosters on Sunday.
Newcastle Lord Mayor Gavin Morris said the driver, a rugby league fan, had lost control of his vehicle and had been taken into custody.
“He was revving the car, he was excited, he was a supporter, he was there for the joy of the moment,” Morris told the national broadcaster ABC.
“Somehow he lost control of the car … and he’s gone into the crowd,” he added.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said: “My thoughts are with everyone injured or involved in the horrible incident this morning in Newcastle.”
“Rugby league brings people together, and this should have been a weekend of excitement and pride for Newcastle fans,” he wrote in a social media post.
[Aljazeera]
Polls have opened in Latvia for an election taking place against the backdrop of perceived security threats from Russia and a nationwide cost-of-living squeeze.
Saturday’s vote is the first electoral test for Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs after coming to power in May this year when his predecessor resigned due to a backlash from stray drone incursions from Ukraine.
Kulbergs, whose right-wing United List party is currently polling at about 20 percent, is expected to hold onto his position, but the decline of two allies in his current coalition means he is set for a complicated negotiation over the makeup of any future government.
Polls opened at 05:00 GMT and will close at 17:00 GMT. The results are not expected to change Latvia’s pro-European and pro-Ukrainian course.
About 1.5 million people are eligible to vote in the country’s 11th parliamentary election since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Latvian politics are highly fragmented, with parties rarely seeing above 20 percent vote share and coalitions being the norm.
This year, 14 electoral lists are contesting the election, but polls indicate only seven are likely to enter parliament, with the rest expected to fail to meet the minimum 5 percent vote threshold.
Rising living costs, low wages, strains on the healthcare system and long-term population decline have all featured prominently in campaign debates.
Most parties in Latvia are pro-Ukraine; however, the populist Sovereign Power party – which says it wants Ukraine to win but argues money spent supporting Kyiv would be better spent at home – looks likely to become the country’s second-biggest party, with more than 9 percent of the vote. Most other parties have ruled out forming a coalition with Sovereign Power.
Latvia First, a pro-Ukraine and populist nationalist party currently polling at about 9 percent, could be a potential coalition partner for PM Kulbergs.
The Progressives, a pro-European social democratic party, are polling at 6 percent.
Ethnic Russians make up roughly one in four Latvian citizens, but their vote, which has traditionally been cast along identity-based lines, looks set to be made according to economic and social issues.
Latvia is the poorest of the Baltic states, and it has sharply increased its defence spending since Russia invaded Ukraine, now allocating nearly 5 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) to defence.
[Aljazeera]
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