Dozens of dead were dragged from a church as Indonesia reeled from the earthquake

The bodies of several dozen students were recovered from a church in Sulawesi flooded by a landslide, authorities announced on Tuesday, as a part of a global effort to assist almost 200,000 increasingly desperate victims of the earthquake in Indonesia.

The discovery adds to the already high death toll from Friday’s disaster, when a strong earthquake triggered a tsunami that hit the coastal city of Palu.

At least 1,234 people are actually known to have died, but authorities say the number is for certain to rise – perhaps to hundreds – as isolated communities are reached and the size of the disaster becomes clear.

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Survivors struggle with thirst and hunger, food and clean water are briefly supply, and native hospitals are overwhelmed by the variety of injured.

Some survivors scrambled through the rubble on the lookout for anything they may salvage, some huddled around chained power strips near the few buildings that also have electricity, others lined up for water, money or gasoline brought in by an armed police convoy.

“The government and the president have come here, but what we really need is food and water,” Burhanuddin told Aid Masse, 48.

The rescue operation is hampered by the shortage of heavy equipment, severed transport links, the size of destruction and the Indonesian government’s reluctance to simply accept foreign aid.

As if to remind the world of Indonesia’s tectonic fragility, a series of earthquakes shook the country on Tuesday morning, although tons of of kilometers from Palu.

The Indonesian army is leading the rescue operation, but after President Joko Widodo reluctantly accepted help, international non-governmental organizations even have teams on the bottom in Palu.

A destroyed hotel in Palu becomes the goal of rescue operations after the earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia

At a church in central Sulawesi that was hit by a landslide, the Red Cross made a grim discovery.

“The team found a total of 34 bodies,” Indonesian Red Cross spokeswoman Aulia Arriani said, adding that 86 students from a Bible camp on the Jonooge Church Training Center were initially reported missing.

Arriani said rescuers needed to make a difficult hike to achieve the mudslide and recuperate the victims.

“The most difficult problem is traveling within the mud for as much as 1.5 hours on foot while transporting bodies to the ambulance,” she said.

The mountainous district of Sigi Biromaru is one in all the more distant regions, situated southeast of town of Palu.

Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, however the archipelago of 260 million people has small pockets of non secular minorities, including Christians.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warned on Monday that 191,000 individuals are in urgent need following the earthquake and tsunami, including 46,000 children and 14,000 elderly people – lots of them in areas not covered by government recovery efforts .

The dead – many still uncounted, their bodies still trapped within the rubble of collapsed buildings – are also causing concern for authorities.

In Indonesia’s hot, equatorial climate, bodies quickly begin to rot, providing a breeding ground for deadly diseases.

Indonesia is combating the consequences of the earthquake and tsunami in Sulawesi

In Poboya – within the hills above the devastated coastal city of Palu – volunteers began filling an enormous grave with the dead, providing instructions on the right way to prepare for the burial of 1,300 victims.

Trucks crammed with corpses wrapped in orange, yellow and black bags bring the load to the location, where the bodies are dragged into the grave and excavators pour dirt on top.

In Balaroa, a suburb of Palu that was once a housing complex, fallen trees, shards of concrete, twisted metal roofing, door frames and mangled furniture will be seen in the space.

Bewildered groups of individuals walked across the wreckage, not knowing where or the right way to start digging. Among them were three men on the lookout for their younger brother.

Rescuers are racing against time because they lack the equipment to avoid wasting people still trapped under the rubble, and as much as 60 people could possibly be trapped under one hotel in Palu.

Two people have been rescued from the 80-room Roa-Roa hotel, Indonesia’s search and rescue agency said, and more should be alive.

Many survivors spent their last days desperately trying to find family members while combating the trauma of the disaster.

One of them, Adi, was hugging his wife on the beach when the tsunami hit on Friday. He has no idea where she is now or whether she is alive.

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“When the wave came, I lost it,” he said. “I used to be carried about 50 meters. I could not hold anything.

Others focused their seek for family members around open-air mortuaries where the dead lay within the blazing sun – waiting to be picked up and named.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was working to reunite families separated through the disaster and was providing “forensic services” to those carrying out the grim task of identifying victims.