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ABC News
ABC News
National
Indonesia correspondent Anne Barker in Cianjur

Five-year-old boy rescued from rubble of landslide triggered by Indonesia's earthquake

Amid scenes of devastation across the Cianjur region of Indonesia after Monday's earthquake, a five-year-old boy is rescued following days being trapped under the rubble of his flattened home. 

Azka was watching television in his bedroom with his mother when the earthquake hit on Monday. 

For three days and three nights, his family and neighbours tried desperately to save them, along with his younger brother and other family members. 

Finally, the boy was pulled alive on Wednesday afternoon, conscious, calm and apparently unscathed. 

The ABC understands Azka's mother is still alive, although local media reports have suggested only his grandfather and brother survived. 

The boy was taken to hospital, where many other survivors are being treated for severe head injuries, broken bones and crushed limbs. 

At least 271 people have been killed, with the death toll likely to rise, and more than 2,000 people have been injured in the quake and subsequent aftershocks and landslides.

With dozens still missing, their loved ones are desperately digging through the rubble to find answers. 

A entire village wiped out by landslides

In the hillside village of Cijedil, the horror of this week's disaster is laid bare.

Men with picks and shovels dig into the muddy earth, where, three days ago, entire streets and homes stood. 

The village has almost disappeared since the earthquake triggered a landslide that buried everything in its path. 

Cucu Handayani was at home on Monday afternoon when the ground started to shake.

At first she thought little of it. Her own home was undamaged, and earthquakes are common in Java.  

This one was only 5.6 on the Richter scale. 

But then her daughter Adinda called in a panic from the shop where she worked, telling her mother she could not contact her husband Sahroni.

The young couple had been married only eight months, and lived with his mother and brother in the same village.

When Adinda raced home, the house was gone.

An entire section of the village had been buried under the landslide.

There was no sign of most of the houses or anyone in them, except for patches of debris sticking incongruously out of the soil.

"I couldn't believe what I saw," Cucu said as she wept.

"All the houses were covered by dirt. I couldn't work out what had happened to them. Because we couldn't contact anyone.

"We tried to call everyone's number, from my daughter's house. But nobody answered.

"Since then we've been in shock, but what can we do?"

Indonesia's President Joko Widodo has promised compensation for the hundreds of families impacted by the quake, and sent in 12,000 soldiers and 2,000 police to help search for the dead and missing.

But many villages surrounding the town where the epicentre struck are still difficult to access, with several major roads cut by landslides.

There have been more than 170 aftershocks since Monday, including one magnitude-3.9 quake on Wednesday afternoon that police say triggered another landslide. 

The possibility of more aftershocks looms, threatening to further destabilise the disaster zone.

And as Indonesia enters its monsoonal rain season, people whose houses have been destroyed are in desperate need for any brief respite from the weather.

Many are sleeping in tents and under tarpaulins, as they wait for more permanent assistance to arrive.

Inside the tents holding the survivors of the Indonesian earthquake

Searching for answers in the debris

Cijedil is a tight-knit community, where even residents whose houses look just as they did the day before the earthquake struck are joining in the desperate dig to find loved ones. 

Adinda's neighbour Nanang Durrahman has spent days searching for six of his relatives, including his daughter-in-law and his two-year-old son. 

He and surviving neighbours have tried desperately to dig through the earth, but most of the houses are too deep to reach. 

As Nanang and the other villagers swing picks and hoes, a team of soldiers arrives to join the search. 

The ground is too steep and unstable to bring heavy equipment up here.

But search teams find part of a house sticking out of the soil, and use a chainsaw to cut their way in. 

The crews are determined to keep searching, though the likelihood of finding survivors at this stage is extremely low.

Authorities have warned that many of the missing may be among the unidentified bodies sitting in hospitals and morgues around the region.

Adinda has now lost her husband, his mother and his brother. Some of her neighbours have lost many more family members.  

Cucu said she has accepted her son-in-law and his family are gone.  

But she hopes their bodies can be recovered, so that she and Adinda can say one last goodbye. 

"I only hope, whatever it takes, I just want to find them and see them for the last time," she said. 

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