At least 62 people have been killed by an earthquake in Indonesia, according to authorities on Java, the country’s largest island.
Approximately 700 individuals have also been hurt by the magnitude 5.6 earthquake.
Herman Suherman, a district official from Cianjur, told Kompas TV that in some areas, landslides were hindering evacuation operations.
According to the National Disaster Mitigation Agency, many individuals were injured as a result of buildings collapsing, and some residents were reportedly entrapped in the debris.
Twenty-five people were discovered in the wreckage, and the search will continue overnight.
According to the US Geological Survey, the quake struck the Cianjur region in the province of West Java at a depth of 10,2 km.
The lack of electricity in the area disrupted communications.
Several landslides were reported in Cianjur, and dozens of buildings, including an Islamic boarding school, a hospital, and other public buildings, were destroyed.
As locals huddled outside, Metro TV footage showed buildings in Cianjur reduced nearly entirely to rubble.
Residents of Jakarta’s capital city fled to the streets for safety.
More than 2,200 homes were damaged, and over 5,300 individuals were displaced.
Muchlis, who was in Cianjur when the earthquake struck, was “extremely astonished” and “worried” since he felt a “big shaking” and his workplace was damaged.
According to the meteorology and geophysics bureau BMKG, twenty-five aftershocks occurred within two hours of the earthquake.
The enormous archipelago nation of more than 270 million people experiences frequent earthquakes, yet Jakarta is rarely affected.
In February, a magnitude 6.2 earthquake in West Sumatra province killed at least 25 people and injured more than 460. Even as far afield as Malaysia and Singapore, tremors were reported.
Following a comparable magnitude earthquake in January 2021, at least 105 people perished and nearly 6,500 were injured in the province of West Sulawesi, Indonesia.
Indonesia spans the so-called “Pacific Ring of Fire,” a highly seismically active zone where several plates on the earth’s crust collide and produce a high frequency of earthquakes and volcanoes.
