Alwaght- At least 92 people were confirmed dead after a huge earthquake hit the Indonesian Sumatra Island Wednesday morning.
National army forces were deployed to the region to help survivors. The army chief of Aceh province, Tatang Sulaiman, said “based on reports, the figure of dead victims is 92, mostly from Pidie Jaya [regency]."
Heni Via, Aceh’s disaster management agency spokesman, was quoted by detik.com as saying that at least 500 people received treatment at a hospital in Sigli town of Pidie Regency, mostly for head injuries and broken bones.
More than 70 of the wounded suffered severe injuries in the magnitude 6.5 temblor, with victims being transported to at least three hospitals in the area.
The chief of neighboring Pidie Jaya Regency’s disaster management agency, Puteh Manaf, had earlier expressed concerns that the death toll “could increase because data keeps entering into the post from some districts".
Nugroho said in an earlier statement that the earthquake hit at shallow depth of 10 kilometers (6 miles) after 5 a.m.
Indonesia lies within the Pacific’s "Ring of Fire", where tectonic plates collide and cause frequent seismic and volcanic activity.
In June, a magnitude 6.5 tremor damaged buildings in western Sumatra Island, with its shocks reportedly felt in parts of Singapore and peninsular Malaysia to the north.
On Dec. 26, 2004, a magnitude-9.1 earthquake struck the eastern coast of Sumatra, causing a tsunami that killed around 230,000 people -- the majority in Aceh -- as it tore along the coasts of Sri Lanka, India, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.
