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Rescuers are continuing to dig through the rubble of collapsed buildings on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, several days after a deadly earthquake struck the region, but officials say hopes of finding survivors alive are rapidly diminishing.
Only a handful of survivors had been pulled from the rubble by Saturday, three days since the 7.6 magnitude quake toppled tens of thousands of buildings in the coastal town of Padang and surrounding villages.
Up to 4,000 people are believed to be trapped under the rubble following Wednesday's earthquake, the United Nations estimates.
Villages wiped out
Jusuf Kalla Indonesia's vice-president said he did not expect many more people to be pulled alive from the devastated landscape.
"Most people here are trapped and buried inside buildings. You cannot hope for more survivors. I think most of them have died," Kalla, speaking during a visit to Pariaman, north of Padang, told reporters.
Al Jazeera's Wayne Hay, reporting from Tandikat in Pariaman, said that three villages had been completely wiped out after a hillside collapsed during the quake.
"What we can see here now is just a scene of absolute devastation - it is covered with mud, dirt after landslides came tumbling down into the valley," he said.
"There really isn't even any sign of debris here, just mud and trees."
Rescue workers were unable to reach the area, normally just a 90 minute drive from Padang, for two days because the roads were cut by landslides and debris.
"We have seen a very small number of military people here and they have one digger, one piece of heavy equipment ... so it is going to be a long road ahead," Hay said.
Estimates of how many people were killed in Pariaman vary, with one tribal chief telling Al Jazeera that at least 300 had been killed.
Bob McKerrow, the head of the Indonesia delegation of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Society, said aerial photos showed the extent of the damage in the mountainous outlying regions.
He said hundreds of villages were in the disaster zone, and that the few he had visited had all reported deaths and serious injuries.
"Typically in every village, there's an old woman with a broken back with a gash on her arm and she's not moving. That's why we're sending in helicopters with medical teams," he said.
Death and destruction
The official death toll for the region currently stands at 777, with hundreds more injured.
More than 20,000 buildings have been destroyed and 2,400 people hospitalised across seven districts, Priyadi Kardono, a spokesman for the national disaster agency, said.
Al Jazeera's Veronica Pedrosa, reporting from Padang, said that foreign aid teams were continuing to arrive at the town's airport and still believed that some of the victims could be found alive.
"It is going to be very difficult for anyone to have survived beneath the rubble, but experts say it is possible on the fourth day depending on the injuries sustained, the strength of the person involved and whether they have managed to get drops of water," she said.
"There are signs of life here and that is confirmed by the international rescue teams with their sniffer dogs."
A number people were believed to be trapped under the rubble of the ruined Dutch-colonial era Ambacang Hotel in the town.
"We think there are eight people alive in there. One sent an SMS to a relative in a village, who got the text at 3pm [08:00 GMT] yesterday," Arkamelvi Karmani, an army officer involved in the rescue operation, said.
The message reportedly called for help and implored rescuers: "Be careful that the excavator doesn't cause the building to collapse on us."
Rescuers were building a tunnel into the rubble to try to reach them.
Inadequate aid
Aid has arrived from 14 countries, the National Disaster Mitigation Agency said. Rescue teams have come from several countries including Australia, Japan, Singapore and South Korea.
But, Testos, an Indonesian Red Cross worker at an aid station in central Padang, said that they only had around half of what would be needed to provide for those affected by the disaster.
"We also need drinking water and clothes because many peoples clothes were burnt in fires," he said.
"We also need medicines to stop infection."
The powerful undersea earthquake struck about 50km from Padang and caused buildings to sway in the Indonesian capital Jakarta, 940km away.
Padang, the capital of Indonesia's West Sumatra province, sits on one of the world's most active fault lines along the so-called Ring of Fire.
PHOTO CAPTION
Rescuers work at night in Ambacang hotel that was destroyed by an earthquake in downtown Padang, Indonesia's West Sumatra province October 3, 2009.
Al-Jazeera
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