PANGANDARAN, Indonesia-
Tearful parents searched for missing children as soldiers pulled corpse after corpse from the debris of homes flattened by the second tsunami to hit Indonesia in two years. More than 340 people died, officials said, with another 229 missing.
Bodies covered in white sheets piled up at makeshift morgues or laid under the blazing sun on a beach popular with local and foreign tourists.
"I don't mind losing any of my property, but please God, return my son," said a villager who gave the name Basril, as he and his wife searched though mounds of rubble at the once idyllic Pangandaran resort.
The magnitude 7.7 undersea quake Monday triggered the two-meter-(two-yard- ) high wall of water that crashed into a 180 kilometer (110 mile) stretch of beach on southern Java island, which was unaffected by the devastating 2004 Asian tsunami.
Though local authorities failed to issue warnings–with one scientist saying they'd realized the quake's power too late–a few people said they'd recognized the danger when they saw the sea recede, and fled to high ground.
A black wave shot ashore half an hour later, sending boats, cars and motorbikes crashing into resorts and fishing villages, and flooding areas 300 meters (yards) inland, witnesses said.
The death toll rose to at least 341, Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare Aburizal Bakrie said Tuesday, with another 229 others missing and feared dead.
"We are still finding many bodies. Many are stuck in the ruins of the houses," said local police chief Syamsuddin Janieb as soldiers nearby pulled a toddler's body from the mud, then washed it for a traditional burial.
Almost all the victims were Indonesians, but a Pakistani, Swede and a Dutch citizen were among those killed, local and foreign ministry officials said.
At least 42,000 people fled their homes, either because they were destroyed or in fear of another tsunami, adding to the difficulty of counting casualties.
At the area's main emergency center, the Banjar Public Hospital, doctors and nurses scrambled to treat a steady stream of patients, most from the Pangandaran coast. Some slept on dirty mattresses on the floor, while others were treated in the admissions hall amid the bustle of family members searching for loved ones.
Among the handful of foreign patients was Saudi Arabian Hamed Abukhamiss, 40, who lost his wife and his son, 4.
Enormous waves had separated the family during an afternoon of surfing, shopping and eating at a waterfront cafe.
Abukhamiss, who suffered minor injuries, said he told himself "I'm not going to give up," as he was repeatedly sucked under the swirling water and battered by debris. "I'm not going to die."
His other son, Yousif, 12, saw the wave approaching with a pair of binoculars, but no one believed him when he yelled "tsunami!"
Indonesia was hardest hit by a 2004 tsunami that killed at least 216,000 people in a dozen Indian Ocean nations. More than a half the dead were in Sumatra island's Aceh province.
Though the country started to install an early warning system after that disaster, it is still in the early stages, covering only Sumatra.
The government had been planning to extend the warning system to Java–which was hit by a quake in May that killed more than 5,800 people–sometime next year.
Fauzi, a scientist who goes by only one name, said he and others had tried to radio government offices across the danger zone, but acknowledged they got a late start because they initially measured the quake at less than magnitude 6.
By the time they figured out their mistake, he said, "there was no way we had the time."
Answering reporters' questions as to why no warning was issued, Vice President Jusuf Kalla claimed there was no need because most people had fled inland after the earthquake, fearing a tsunami.
"After the quake occurred, people ran to the hills … so in actual fact there was a kind of natural early warning system," he said in Jakarta.
However, of dozens of people interviewed by the AP in Pangandaran on Tuesday, only one person said he felt a slight tremor. None said there was a mass movement of people to higher ground before the tsunami struck.
Indonesia is on the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire," an arc of volcanoes and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.
