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Sumatra Floods and Landslides Kill Hundreds as Search Push Intensifies

Cut-off roads plus dead phone networks are slowing lifesaving operations.

Overview

  • Indonesia’s disaster agency reports 604 dead and 464 missing across three Sumatra provinces, while separate media tallies cite 686 dead, 476 missing and more than one million evacuated.
  • About 570,000 people are displaced in North Sumatra, West Sumatra and Aceh as responders rely on air deliveries where roads are buried or washed out and communications remain down.
  • Key routes, including the corridor through Aidan Koting in North Tapanuli linking districts to the port city of Sibolga, are severed despite heavy machinery clearing some access.
  • The disaster agency says search-and-rescue teams are operating at full speed as survivors report urgent shortages of food, clean water, medicine and shelter.
  • President Prabowo Subianto pledges a full-force response and urges stronger climate readiness and local environmental action to reduce future risks.