Shock and grief: Ahmad Ashikin (second from left) cries out in anguish after receiving news of his daughter’s fate at Cugenang village, Cianjur. — AFP
A SEVEN-year-old girl who was the subject of a day-long rescue effort after an earthquake killed 272 people in West Java has been found dead, rescuers said.
Emergency workers found the body of Ashika Nur Fauziah, also known as Cika, under rubble in Cianjur town, epicentre of the quake that triggered landslides, collapsed roofs and buried victims in earth.“The body was handed over to the family. The family accepted and she was then buried,” 28-year-old rescuer Jeksen Kolibu said yesterday.
“The family was very hysterical. Very sad. The mother was the one who received the body.”
Dozens of rescuers had spent most of Thursday using digging tools and bare hands to clear debris, which was suspended overnight until yesterday morning.
Cika was found under three layers of concrete, said Kolibu.
The focus of the search had centred on her grandmother’s house, across the road from the family home, where her mother believed she had been playing when the earthquake struck.
“She was playing outside, I was in the kitchen, the earthquake happened so fast, two seconds, my house collapsed,” her mother Imas Masfahitah, 34, said on Thursday.
Hopes of a happy outcome had been raised following the dramatic rescue of a six-year-old boy, Azka, on Wednesday, which was described as a “miracle” after he survived more than two days in the rubble without food or water. — AFP
