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Offical: Indonesia dam burst kills 18

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-03-27 13:29

JAKARTA -- A dam burst near Jakarta early Friday has killed 18 people and left hundreds of homes underwater, an Indonesian health ministry official said.

Children sit in front of their house at a slum area near Tanjung Priok harbour in Jakarta March 25, 2009. [Agencies]

"It rained very heavily for several hours yesterday. The lake overloaded with water and the dam broke," Rustam Pakaya, who heads the ministry's crisis centre, said.

"The water from the lake caused flooding and hundreds of houses are under water and there may be people missing," he added.

The dam at Situ Gintung lake in Cireundeu outside Jakarta burst in the early hours of the morning, sending waves of brown water into low-lying homes.

"Right now residents are being evacuated. About half of them are still on rooftops waiting for help."

Victims were being evacuated to dry ground at a nearby university, Pakaya said.

"It was like being in the middle of a tsunami," local resident Minu told news website Detikcom.

"People were screaming 'the water's coming in, the water's coming in,' and our dog was barking. I could hear our door being pounded on and I wondered who could it be, but it was the water."

Television images showed residents frantically evacuating flood victims from submerged homes via the neihgbourhood's twisted alleyways.

Floods and landslides are common in Indonesia during the wet season, which falls around the northern hemisphere's summer.