Jakarta: At least 162 people were killed and 326 others were injured following an earthquake in Indonesia, with the "majority" of them being children, according to West Java's governor. At least 2,345 houses were heavily damaged and 13,400 were displaced in the 5.6 magnitude quake, governor Ridwan Kamil said.
Herman Suherman, a district official from Cianjur, said that evacuation efforts were being hampered by landslides in some places. Many people were hurt because they were hit by collapsed buildings, according to the National Disaster Mitigation Agency, with some residents trapped in the rubble.
Many casualties included children, some of whom were resuscitated while others were given oxygen masks. "The majority of those who died were children," the governor said, adding that many were public school students who had finished their regular classes and were taking extra lessons at Islamic schools.
Several landslides were reported around Cianjur and dozens of buildings were damaged, including an Islamic boarding school, a hospital and other public facilities. Twenty-five aftershocks were recorded in two hours after the quake, according to the weather and geophysics agency BMKG.
Earthquakes occur frequently across the sprawling archipelago nation of more than 270 million people, but it is uncommon for them to be felt in Jakarta.
