Baby reunited with dad as Indonesia flood death toll hits 77

SENTANI, INDONESIA - A baby trapped under rubble after flash flooding destroyed his home in Indonesia has been reunited with his father after the disaster killed the rest of their family, officials said on Monday (March 18), as the death toll hit 77.

The five-month-old was plucked on Sunday from debris inside a house where his mother and siblings were found dead in the hard-hit north-eastern town of Sentani.

The tot has since been returned to his surviving father.

"We took the baby to the hospital and had him treated," Papua province military spokesman Muhammad Aidi told AFP.

"He was in stable condition and has been released. The father was distressed but happy to be reunited with his baby."

The news came as Indonesia's disaster agency raised the official death toll from 58, with more than three dozen people still missing.

Scores have been injured in the disaster, triggered by torrential rain and landslides last Saturday.

"The death toll could still go up, with 43 people unaccounted for," said national disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho.

Rescuers battled mud, rocks and fallen trees in the hunt for survivors, as medical personnel treated the wounded in makeshift tents.

The military said 5,700 people have been evacuated from the hard-hit area. "We have over 1,000 personnel searching for more victims," Mr Aidi said.

Indonesia has issued a 14-day state of emergency in response to the floods.

Papua province shares a border with independent Papua New Guinea on an island just north of Australia.

Flooding is common in Indonesia, especially during the rainy season which runs from October to April.

In January, floods and landslides killed at least 70 people on Sulawesi island, while earlier this month, hundreds in West Java province were forced to evacuate when torrential rains triggered severe flooding.

Meanwhile, three people were killed - including two Malaysian tourists - and some 180 were injured after an earthquake on Sunday triggered a landslide on the Indonesian tourist island of Lombok, next to Bali.

The 5.5-magnitude quake is thought to have caused the landslide at the Tiu Kelep waterfall in the north of the island.

Lombok was rocked by several earthquakes last summer, killing more than 500 people and leaving over 150,000 homeless.

Last September, the country was hit by an earthquake and tsunami in Palu on Sulawesi island which killed around 2,200 people.

The South-east Asian archipelago of some 17,000 islands is one of the most disaster-prone nations on Earth, straddling the Pacific Ring of Fire, where tectonic plates collide. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are common.