Indonesia Quake Death Toll Reaches 131

Hopes of finding survivors faded in quake-devastated Lombok island in Indonesia on Wednesday as a humanitarian crisis for 156,000 left homeless looms with a shortage of clean water, food and medicine. Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency put the death toll from Sunday’s magnitude 6.9 earthquake at 131, including two on the western neighboring island of Bali, Al Jazeera reported. The agency said the figure was expected to rise. Nearly 2,500 people have been hospitalized with serious injuries. Rescue workers were finding some hamlets hard to reach because bridges and roads were torn up by the major earthquake. “Teams are speaking of coming across ghost towns, villages that have essentially been abandoned,” said Matthew Cochrane of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. He added 80% of buildings had been damaged or destroyed. Rescuers dug through the rubble of a mosque on Wednesday where an unknown number of people were suspected buried. A woman’s body was recovered, said rescue workers.