Almost two days after the shocking earthquake on the Indonesian island of Java, a 6-year-old boy has been rescued from a collapsed house.
He was found alive in the hardest-hit city of Cianjur on Wednesday morning local time and had been buried under rubble for about 40 hours, a firefighter involved in the rescue operation said. The child was still breathing and was immediately attended to.
Two days after the earthquake, the search is still on for 151 missing persons. The death toll from the earthquake has now risen to at least 268. Among the fatalities were many children who went to the mosque after school
The quake with a magnitude of 5.6 occurred on Monday afternoon (local time) about 70 kilometres southeast of the capital Jakarta, at a depth of ten kilometres. The epicentre was near the city of Cianjur, where the heaviest damage was also measured.
Indonesia has about 270 million inhabitants, more than half of whom live on the main island of Java. The island state is located in the so-called ‘Pacific Ring of Fire’, where earthquakes and volcanic eruptions often occur.