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A second earthquake hit Indonesia today hampering rescue efforts as it emerged thousands may have died in yesterday's quake.
The 6.8 magnitude quake struck on land at 8.52am local time (2.52am BST) today 140 miles south-east of the coastal city of Padang on the island of Sumatra.
Rescue workers struggled in heavy rain to find people trapped under debris after a 7.6 magnitude quake hit under the sea to the north-west of Padang yesterday, toppling buildings and bringing devastation. The official death toll has reached 467 from the first quake, but ministers warned thousands more are feared to have died.
Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said: "I think it's more than thousands, if we look at how widespread the damage is."
Hundreds of buildings, including hospitals and schools, have been destroyed while at least 500 homes have been reduced to rubble. Communications have also been made difficult in the port city of 900,000 people by the toppling of telephone lines.
Australian businesswoman Jane Liddon told Australian radio from Padang that the city centre had been devastated. She said: "The big buildings are down. The concrete buildings are all down, the hospitals, the main markets, down and burned. A lot of people died in there. A lot of places are burning.
"Most of the damage is in the town centre in the big buildings."
Television footage showed piles of debris, collapsed houses and multi-storey buildings, with scores of crushed cars, after the earthquake.
The main hospital had collapsed, roads were cut by landslides and a local television network said the roof of the airport had caved in.
Damage to roads has also affected the transport of rubber in West Sumatra province, the fifth-largest producing province for rubber in Indonesia.
Officials said heavy equipment such as bulldozers, excavators and concrete cutters was badly needed.
The disaster is the latest in a spate of natural and man-made calamities to hit Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago of 226 million people.Welfare minister Aburizal Bakrie said the damage could be similar to that caused by a 2006 quake in the Java city of Yogyakarta that killed 5,000 and damaged 150,000 homes.
Sumatra is home to some of the country's largest oil fields as well as its oldest liquefied natural gas terminal, although there were no immediate reports of damage.
Padang sits on one of the world's most active fault lines along the "Ring of Fire" where the Indo-Australia plate grinds against the Eurasia plate to create regular tremors and sometimes quakes. Geologists have long warned Padang may one day be destroyed by a huge earthquake because of its location.
