Video emerges of people running from Indonesian tsunami

Sigit Lembah shot the video from a balcony where he and many others had sought shelter after a 7.5 magnitude quake struck Sulawesi island, 1,500 km (30 miles) northeast of Jakarta, on September 28.

DONATE NOW: help the thousands of people left homeless by the Indonesian tsunami >>He and two friends had been on their way to the annual Palu Nomoni Festival on Talise beach when the tremor struck, he said, adding that one of them fell into a crack that opened up in the ground but they managed to pull him out.The death toll from the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Indonesia’s Sulawesi island has topped 1,700 and officials fear another 5,000 people could be missing.

The national disaster agency said the number of dead had climbed to 1,763, mostly in Palu.

Agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said many more people could be buried, especially in the Palu districts of Petobo and Balaroa, where more than 3,000 homes were damaged or sucked into deep mud on 28 September.

He said: “Based on reports from village chiefs in Balaroa and Petobo, some 5,000 people have not been found. Our workers on the ground are trying to confirm this.”

He said efforts to retrieve bodies in the mud were getting more difficult and that some people may have fled or been rescued and evacuated. More than 8,000 injured or vulnerable residents have been flown or shipped out of Palu, while others could have left by land, he said.