Pictures: Indonesian rescuers search through rubble of quake; 268 dead

The death toll from an earthquake on Indonesia’s main island of Java jumped to 268 on Tuesday, as rescuers searched for survivors in the rubble and relatives started to bury their loved ones.

Wounded survivors are being treated in the yard of a hospital in Cianjur. The epicentre of the 5.6 magnitude quake was near the town of Cianjur in mountainous West Java, about 75 km southeast of the capital, Jakarta. The region is home to over 2.5 million people.

As body bags emerged from crumpled buildings in Indonesia’s most populous province, West Java, rescue efforts turned to any survivors still under debris in areas made hard to reach by the mass of obstacles thrown onto the roads by the quake.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo distributes meals to local children at a temporary shelter during his visit to the locations affected by earthquake in Cianjur, West Java province, Indonesia, November 22, 2022.

A local stands in front of his damaged house in Cianjur.

Ridwan told reporters that given many buildings have collapsed, the death toll could rise. "There are residents trapped in isolated places ... so we are under the assumption that the number of injured and deaths will rise with time."

Ridwan said 88 aftershocks were recorded while weather agency BMKG warned of more landslides in the event of heavy rain. | Above: Wounded survivors are being treated in the yard of a hospital in Cianjur.

Indonesia straddles the so-called "Pacific Ring of Fire", a highly seismically active zone, where different plates on the Earth's crust meet and create a large number of earthquakes and volcanoes.

The BNPB said more than 2,200 houses had been damaged and more than 5,300 people had been displaced. Ridwan put that number at 13,000 and said they would be spread out at various evacuation centres across Cianjur.

Electricity was down, disrupting communications, authorities said, while landslides were blocking evacuations in some areas. | Above: Rescuers remove the wreckages of vehicles damaged in an earthquake-triggered landslide in Cianjur.

Hundreds of victims were being treated in a hospital parking lot, some under an emergency tent. Elsewhere in Cianjur, residents huddled together on mats in open fields or in tents while buildings around them had been reduced to rubble.

Officials were still working to determine the full extent of the damage caused by the quake, which struck at a relatively shallow depth of 10 km, according to the weather and geophysics agency (BMKG).

A woman walks past a house damaged by an earthquake in Cianjur, West Java.

A local collects her goods from the house damaged in Cianjur. In 2004, a 9.1 magnitude quake off Sumatra island in northern Indonesia triggered a tsunami that struck 14 countries, killing 226,000 people along the Indian Ocean coastline, more than half of them in Indonesia.