Death toll in Indonesia earthquake rises to 310

The death toll from a 5.6 magnitude quake that hit Indonesia’s West Java Province rose to 310, CGTN reported citing the country’s national disaster mitigation agency.The 5.6-magnitude quake hit the Cianjur region in West Java at about 1:21 p.m. local time on Monday at a depth of 10 kilometres (6.2 miles), according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), causing buildings to collapse while school classes were underway.The death toll from the earthquake has risen to 310 and a total of 24 people remain missing, CGTN reported.Earlier, the head of the BNPB, Maj Gen Suharyanto, during a press conference said that the death toll rose to 271 and over a third of those confirmed dead are children, reported CNN.Some 2,043 people were injured and 61,800 have been displaced, he added. Forty people remain missing. Suharyanto said 56,320 houses were damaged, more than a third of them badly.Other damaged buildings included 31 schools, 124 places of worship and three health facilities. The agency has built 14 refugee shelters with facilities for displaced people, Suharyanto said.Victims are expected to leave their temporary tents and move to these main shelters, he said. According to Suharyanto, BNPB deployed more than 6,000 rescuers to search-and-rescue operations, reported CNN.The scale of the death and destruction caused by the quake became increasingly clear on Tuesday, after earlier discrepancies in the casualty numbers reported by officials.Visiting areas affected by the quake on Tuesday, Indonesian President Joko Widodo said the government would provide compensation of up to about USD 3,200 each for owners of heavily damaged homes, reported CNN.Houses should be rebuilt as earthquake-resistant buildings, he added.Indonesia’s bureau of meteorology, the BMKG, warned of a danger of landslides, particularly in the event of heavy rain, as 25 aftershocks were recorded in the first two hours after the quake.Indonesia sits on the “Ring of Fire,” a band around the Pacific Ocean that sets off frequent earthquakes and volcanic activity.One of the most seismically active zones on the planet, it stretches from Japan and Indonesia on one side of the Pacific to California and South America on the other.In 2004, a 9.1 magnitude quake off Sumatra island in northern Indonesia triggered a tsunami that struck 14 countries, killing 226,000 people along the Indian Ocean coastline, more than half of them in Indonesia.