Category: The Sydney Morning Herald

Dozens of bodies pulled from mud as relief effort in Indonesia slowly expands – Los Angeles Times/Sydney Morning HeraldRTÉ

JAKARTA — Aid workers described scenes of destruction and desperation Monday in areas of central Sulawesi they reached for the first time since a magnitude 7.5 earthquake and tsunami leveled parts of the Indonesian island, blocked roads and turned solid ground into mud. Just outside the hard-hit town of Palu, the regional capital and hub of the relief effort, volunteers retrieved the bodies of 34 students from a Bible school in the town of Sigi Biromaru, said Aulia Arriani, head of communications at the Indonesian Red Cross. The Red Cross team had “a hard time to evacuate the bodies as they had to walk through mud for one-and-a-half hours,” Aulia said. At least 1,203 people were killed after Friday’s quake, according to an unofficial count by volunteers, nongovernmental groups and hospitals in Palu. The tremor unleashed a tsunami as high as 20 feet crashing into the coastline, destroying roads and bridges, downing cellphone towers and washing away thousands of houses.

Anger across Asia at Myanmar’s violence against Rohingya Muslims – Los Angeles Times/Sydney Morning Herald

JAKARTA — Hundreds of protesters in Indonesia rallied for the third straight day Monday as Muslim nations across Asia voiced growing concern over Myanmar’s brutal military crackdown against its Rohingya Muslim minority . Gathering outside the Myanmar Embassy in Jakarta, the demonstrators, mostly hijab-clad women, chanted, “God is great!” and demanded the Indonesian government put pressure on neighboring Myanmar to stop the military operation that has sent tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees streaming into camps in Bangladesh — the second such exodus in the last 12 months. “We are here because of solidarity of Muslims,” said one demonstrator who gave her name as Mama Bahin.