Ruinous floods and landslides have killed more than 900 people on Indonesia\u2019s island of Sumatra, the country\u2019s disaster management agency said on Saturday, with fears that starvation could send the toll even higher.<\/p>\n
A chain of tropical storms and monsoonal rains has pummelled Southeast and South Asia, triggering landslides and flash floods from the Sumatran rainforest to the highland plantations of Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n
More than 1,790 people have been killed in natural disasters unfolding across Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam over the past week.<\/p>\n
In Indonesia\u2019s provinces of Aceh and North Sumatra, floods have swept away roads, smothered houses in silt, and cut off supplies.<\/p>\n
Aceh Governor Muzakir Manaf said response teams were still searching for bodies in \u201cwaist-deep\u201d mud.<\/p>\n
However, starvation was one of the gravest threats now hanging over remote and inaccessible villages.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany people need basic necessities. Many areas remain untouched in the remote areas of Aceh,\u201d he told reporters.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are not dying from the flood, but from starvation. That\u2019s how it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Entire villages had been washed away in the rainforest-cloaked Aceh Tamiang region, Muzakir said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Aceh Tamiang region is completely destroyed, from the top to the bottom, down to the roads and down to the sea.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany villages and sub-districts are now just names,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Aceh Tamiang flood victim Fachrul Rozi said he had spent the past week crammed into an old shop building with others who had fled the rising waters.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe ate whatever was available, helping each other with the little supplies each resident had brought,\u201d he told AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe slept crammed together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aceh resident Munawar Liza Zainal said he felt \u201cbetrayed\u201d by the Indonesian government, which has so far shrugged off pressure to declare a national disaster.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an extraordinary disaster that must be faced with extraordinary measures,\u201d he told AFP, echoing frustrations voiced by other flood victims.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf national disaster status is only declared later, what\u2019s the point?\u201d<\/p>\n
Declaring a national disaster would free up resources and help government agencies coordinate their response.<\/p>\n
Analysts have suggested Indonesia could be reluctant to declare a disaster \u2014 and seek additional foreign aid \u2014 because it would show it was not up to the task.<\/p>\n
Indonesia\u2019s government this week insisted it could handle the fallout.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ruinous floods and landslides have killed more than 900 people on Indonesia\u2019s island of Sumatra, the country\u2019s disaster management agency said on Saturday, with fears that starvation could send the toll even higher. A chain of tropical storms and monsoonal rains has pummelled Southeast and South Asia, triggering landslides and flash floods from the Sumatran […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13902,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13901"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13903,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13901\/revisions\/13903"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}