INDONESIA TSUNAMI Search continues for survivors, bodies

At least 42,000 people fled their homes.
PANGANDARAN, Indonesia (AP) -- Indonesia pledged to build a nationwide tsunami alert system as soldiers pulled bodies from ravaged beaches, homes and hotels Tuesday. Parents searched tearfully for their children and the death toll hit at least 341, with nearly 230 people missing.
Bodies covered in white sheets piled up at makeshift morgues, while others lay beneath the blazing sun in the tourist resort of Pangandaran, a 6-month-old baby among them.
The search for survivors continued Tuesday, with parents among the last to give up.
"The water was too strong," said Irah as she dug through a pile of rubble with her bare hands, close to the spot where she last saw her 6-year-old son. "Oh God. Eki, where are you?"
The magnitude 7.7 undersea quake on Monday triggered walls of water more than 6 feet high that crashed into a 110-mile stretch of beach on Java island, an area spared by the devastating 2004 Asian tsunami.
The waves destroyed houses, restaurants and hotels and tossed boats, cars and motorbikes far inland.
Toll expected to rise
The death toll rose Tuesday to at least 341, according to Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare Aburizal Bakrie, and, with 229 more missing, the number was expected to climb.
"We are still finding many bodies. Many are stuck in the ruins of the houses," said police chief Syamsuddin Janieb.
Almost all the victims were Indonesians, but a Pakistani, a Swede and a Dutch citizen were among those killed, officials said.
At least 42,000 people fled their homes, either because they were destroyed or in fear of another tsunami, adding to the difficulty of counting casualties.
At the area's main hospital, in the town of Banjar, medics scrambled to treat a steady stream of patients, most from the Pangandaran coast. Some slept on dirty mattresses on the floor, while others were treated in the admissions hall.
Among the handful of foreign patients was Hamed Abukhamiss, a 40-year-old Saudi who was eating french fries with his family at a beach-side cafe when the tsunami came into view on the horizon.
His 12-year-old son, Yousif, saw the wave approaching through binoculars, but no one believed him when he yelled "Tsunami!"
Less than a minute later the family was swept away in the torrent of water, and Abukhamiss' wife and 4-year-old son were killed.
"I'll bury them here, but I will never come back," he said, crying in his hospital bed. "How am I going to tell my daughter her mother is dead?"