Thousands await aid after deadly quake

Uneasy rest: Villagers looking on after spending the night in an open field in Nangahale village in Sikka, East Nusa Tenggara, after the magnitude 7.7 earthquake off Flores Island. — AFP

Help started arriving for thousands of evacuees on Indonesia’s Flores island after a powerful earthquake killed 48 people, injured dozens and damaged hundreds of houses and buildings.

Some 5,000 people fled their homes as the 7.7-magnitude quake hit the island early Saturday, followed by at least 341 aftershocks in the hours that followed, a spokesman for the BNPB national disaster agency, Berton Suar Pelita Panjaitan, said.