Rotting bodies fill streets of quake city

The streets of Banda Aceh are filled with overturned cars and the rotting corpses of adults and children.

Office buildings and the only shopping mall lie in rubble. Thousands of homeless families huddle together in mosques and schools.

A day after their city was hit by the most powerful earthquake in 40 years, still-shocked residents of the Indonesian provincial capital struggled to comprehend the enormity of what had happened.

At least 3,000 people were killed in the city, on the northern tip of Sumatra island, by the undersea quake that was centred off its western coast and the tidal waves that swamped its streets soon after.

“Where are my children?” said 41-year-old Absah, crying uncontrollably as she searched for her 11 children she said were still missing. “Where are they? Why did this happen to me? I’ve lost everything.”

Scores of bodies were laid out on neat rows for relatives to identify in tents on the outskirts of the city, the capital of Aceh province.

Many people spent the past 24 hours searching local hospitals for their loved ones. Food, water, petrol and other basic supplies were hard to find, residents said.

Banda Aceh, a city of about 400,000 people, was unusual in that Sunday’s quake caused many of the deaths. Elsewhere in Asia, more than 20,000 thousand died from flooding caused by huge tsunami waves.

The city’s only mall was reduced to a pile of concrete and its mosque, which has dominated the skyline for centuries, was left leaning precariously. Dozens of cars, many half overturned, were abandoned in the street.

The bodies of at least 10 children and five adults littered the streets, some under piles of timber. At one intersection, a dead cow was left wedged between two traffic lights by receding waters. Phone lines and electricity remained down.

Outside the city, rescue crews were still not able to reach remote islands off the coast or scores of seaside villages that dot the province’s jungle terrain.

By tonight, at least 5,000 people had been killed on Sumatra as a result of the quake and flooding.

But Vice President Yusuf Kalla speculated that as many as 10,000 people may have been killed on the island.

In the village of Pidie, witnesses said the tsunami tossed boats about like toys and destroyed hundreds of wooden houses.

Abdul Dahlan, a 27-year-old fisherman, said he was waiting on the beach for his brother to return from sea when he noticed a strange silence. The water then rapidly receded.

“We yelled out: The sea is drying out! It’s drying out,” he said. “Ten minutes later the water came back with waves so high, it frightened the life out of me. My house is completely swept away. I have nothing left except the clothes I am wearing now.”