Survivors combed the rubble of buildings for loved ones on Indonesia's earthquake-devastated Nias Island yesterday as reports emerged of hundreds of additional deaths on a nearby island group.

On Nias, where about 1,000 people are thought to have died, injured survivors pleaded for help and some, driven by hunger, looted rice from a government store.

"Please sir, help us, we are starving," said a man in Gunungsitoli, the main town on Nias, as dozens of people looted the store. Police looked on helplessly.

An Indonesian disaster official said about 200-300 people also died on the isolated Banyak Island group just north of Nias.

"But we have not received further information about the homeless and wounded," Nerli Sulitiani, an official with the national disaster agency in the northern city of Medan, said.

Monday's magnitude 8.7 earthquake devastated a region that escaped major damage in the December 26 quake and tsunami disaster which left nearly 300,000 dead or missing along Indian Ocean shores.

The epicenter of Monday's quake was about 160 kilometers southeast of the bigger one three months ago.

Large parts of Nias, famed as a surfing paradise, have been damaged and much of Gunungsitoli has been flattened. Rescue and body recovery efforts have been hampered by a shortage of fuel and poor weather.

Survivors used tools and bare hands to dig for loved ones.

"I saw her breathing this morning," said Ramadin, trying to shatter a block of concrete with a crowbar to save his aunt.

Fears of another tsunami have since subsided and survivors focused on finding life's essentials.

"They drive us away like pigs. We came here because we are hungry," said Abdul Murah Tanjung, 55, a Muslim resident of the mostly Christian island, outside the government rice store in Gunungsitoli.

Adding to the misery, thousands of people have spent two nights in the open, fearing after shocks would bring down more buildings.

'A ghost town'

Officials said logistical problems were making it hard to help survivors on Nias, about 1,400 kilometers northwest of Indonesia's capital Jakarta. About 700,000 live on the island.

"The main problem now is logistical issues. It is very hard to move the victims," said T. Rizal Nurdin, governor of North Sumatra Province.

"It is like the situation in December. There is no logistical support like fuel," he said, adding three Singaporean military Chinook helicopters were expected to arrive yesterday.

The Singapore government said the helicopters would be carrying medical and civil defence teams as well as officials from the Singapore Red Cross and Mercy Relief.

Elsewhere in Gunungsitoli, a town of about 30,000 people, survivors wept over the bodies of relatives brought to mosques, churches and temples.

The stench of death hung in the air.

Jude Barrand, spokeswoman for relief agency Surf Aid International, said hundreds of wounded were receiving no medical treatment as most doctors and nurses had fled fearing a tsunami.

"It is like a ghost town. Most people have run for the hills. The ones who are left are trapped in the rubble of their houses," she said, citing reports from Surf Aid staff in the town.

Survivors were running out of food and water because most shops had been destroyed.

Sketchy reports

The Banyak island group, with a population of around 5,000, is the closest land mass to the quake's epicenter but reports of damage there have been slow to emerge, officials said.

"They are pretty much right on top of that epicenter," Barrand said.

The United Nations and other international aid agencies -- many already in the region because of the December 26 tsunami -- have rushed to disaster-hit areas.

The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said a large landing craft was scheduled arrive yesterday.

(China Daily March 31, 2005)