PALU, Indonesia (AP) — Aid continued is continuing to pour into hard-hit areas of Indonesia’s Sulawesi island, which has been rattled by some 450 aftershocks since an earthquake and tsunami struck just over a week ago.

A military transport plane from Japan arrived in the city of Palu on Saturday carrying emergency relief, including food and medicine. Meanwhile, commercial flights to the airport have partially resumed with two to three flights per day.

Disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho posted a graphic on his Twitter account showing around 450 aftershocks being recorded in the area since the Sept. 28 quake, but they have decreased in frequency and intensity.

More than 70,000 people have been left homeless from the disaster and 1,571 people have been confirmed dead. Many more remain missing.</s>A man carries a portrait of his mother after he found it at her destroyed home, in Palu, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, Sunday. Jorge Silva, Reuters

PALU - Nearly 2000 bodies have been recovered from Palu since an earthquake and tsunami struck the Indonesian city, an official said Monday, warning the number would rise with thousands still missing.

The death toll from the twin disaster on Sulawesi island that erased whole suburbs in Palu has reached 1,944, said local military spokesman M. Thohir.

"That number is expected to rise, because we have not received orders to halt the search for bodies," Thohir, who is also a member of the government's official Palu quake taskforce, told AFP on Monday.

Authorities have said as many as 5,000 are believed missing in two hard-hit areas since the September 28 disaster -- indicating far more may have perished than the current toll.

Hopes of finding anyone alive have faded and the search for survivors amid the wreckage has turned to gathering and accounting for the dead.

The disaster agency said the official search for the unaccounted would continue until October 11 at which point they would be listed as missing, presumed dead.

The government has said it will declare those communities flattened in Palu as mass graves and leave them untouched.

Gopal, whose aunt and uncle are missing, picked through wreckage Monday knowing just days were left to find his loved ones.

"Even if they (search teams) stop looking, we will still try to find them ourselves," the 40-year-old said in Balaroa, one of the hardest hit neighborhoods.

"When we can no longer do it ourselves, we leave it to Allah," Gopal, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, added.

Excavators and rescuers combed Balaroa on Monday, where a massive government housing complex was all but swallowed up by the disaster.

Rescuers have struggled to extract decomposing bodies from the tangled mess left behind.

Officials say as many as 5,000 people were feared buried at Balaroa and Petobo, another decimated community.

Petobo, a cluster of villages, was subsumed when vibrations from the 7.5-magnitude quake turned soil to quicksand -- a process known as liquefaction.

Relief efforts have escalated to assist 200,000 people in desperate need. Food and clean water remain in short supply, and many are dependent entirely on handouts to survive.

Helicopters have been running supply drops to more isolated communities outside Palu, where the full extent of the damage is still not entirely clear.

The Red Cross said Monday it had treated more than 1,800 people at medical clinics and administered first aid to a similar number in the immediate disaster zone.

Indonesia sits along the world's most tectonically active region, and its 260 million people are vulnerable to earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions.</s>Officials fear at least 5,000 people may still be missing in Indonesia following a deadly earthquake and tsunami that killed 1,763 people and devastated the northern island of Sulawesi.

Officials updated the number of casualties on Sunday. The country's disaster agency announced the search for survivors would end Thursday, despite fears that scores of people still remain buried under heaps of rubble and mud.

Thousands of those still missing are thought to be from the towns of Baleroa and Petobo, which was swept away following the 7.5 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami last month, leaving mass destruction in its wake. Officials are reportedly considering declaring the area mass graves because of the widespread damage.

Officials said it was still unsafe to use heavy machinery in some areas where soil had loosened and collapsed after the earthquake in a process known as liquefaction.

Many of the dead were buried in mass graves because of the overwhelming amount of victims. Officials have said they worry that a delay in burying the bodies could create a new health crisis.

Families have sifted through body bags searching for their loved ones. Many of the missing are believed to be dead as rescue efforts enter its second and final week. Those not found by Thursday will be presumed dead, disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said.

More than 30 bodies were recovered in one place on Saturday. Officials said rescue efforts will now focus on supplying aid and relief to survivors of effected areas.

62,000 people remain displaced, Nugroho said, as aid donations slowly reach those impacted by the disaster.

Reports indicate that the country's early detection warning systems were not working before the tsunami hit.

Officials confirmed to the BBC that a network of more than 20 floating detection units connected to underwater sensors which transmit advance tsunami warnings to the Indonesian meteorology and geophysics agency had either been damaged or stolen.

The system had not worked since 2012, and an apparent lack of funding hasn't helped.

"If we look at the funding, it has decreased every year," disaster agency spokesperson Sutopo told local media Sunday.

A tsunami warning was still issued, but it appeared to significantly underestimated the scale of the impending waves. Indonesia's geophysics agency warned of a tsunami nearly 10 feet tall, but lifted the warning shortly after it was issued.</s>The earthquake followed by a tsunami that devastated Indonesia's Sulawesi island had so far left a death toll of 1,763 with at least 5,000 people still missing, officials said Sunday.

The 7.5-magnitude earthquake that triggered a tsunami on the island nine days ago had also left rescue workers and officials trying to determine how many people were still missing after several villages were destroyed, disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said.</s>Indonesia disaster agency says death toll from quake and tsunami climbs to 1,763, with more than 5,000 feared missing

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesia disaster agency says death toll from quake and tsunami climbs to 1,763, with more than 5,000 feared missing.</s>JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesia disaster agency says death toll from quake and tsunami climbs to 1,763, with more than 5,000 feared missing.</s>More than 5,000 people could still be missing in Indonesia, following a powerful earthquake that hit the island of Sulawesi last week, officials said on Sunday.

Thousands of people are believed to be missing in the towns of Baleroa and Petobo, where rivers of soil swept away entire neighborhoods in the aftermath of a 7.5-magnitude earthquake and ensuing tsunami on September 28.

The confirmed death toll from the quake has now reached 1,763, with 265 people missing in central Sulawesi's largest city, Palu, the spokesperson of Indonesia's Disaster Management Agency, Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, told reporters in Jakarta on Sunday.

Almost all of the dead have been buried in mass graves. Another 62,000 people have been displaced by the disaster, Nugroho said.

The spokesman estimated that 5,000 people could still be missing in Baleroa and Petobo, which had been badly hit by soil liquefaction -- a process where the soil becomes saturated with water, causing it to erupt into torrents that topple buildings.

In the days following the quake, more than 1,000 houses in the towns were buried under rivers of soil.

In the city of Palu, home to about 350,000 people, footage showed people running to find solid ground as structures were destroyed by waves of undulating earth.

"Liquefaction occurs when loose sandy soils with shallow groundwater are subjected to sudden loading such as shaking from an earthquake," explained Jonathan Stewart, a professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of California, Los Angeles.

"During the earthquake, water pressure is generated in the soil, which causes a dramatic loss of strength," added Stewart. "The strength loss can be so great that the soil behaves almost like a liquid."

The process is thought to have played a key role in other earthquakes, such as those in Japan and New Zealand, both in 2011.

Meanwhile, in Sulawesi, 82,000 military, civilians and volunteers continue in the search and rescue effort, even as the island had been rocked by 451 aftershocks since the powerful quake.</s>By The Associated Press

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesia disaster agency says death toll from quake and tsunami climbs to 1,763, with more than 5,000 feared missing.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesia disaster agency says death toll from quake and tsunami climbs to 1,763, with more than 5,000 feared missing.

Copyright © 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.</s>Christians dressed in their tidiest clothes flocked to Sunday sermons in the earthquake and tsunami damaged Indonesian city of Palu, seeking answers as the death toll from the twin disasters breached 1,700 and officials said they feared more than 5,000 others could be missing.

Indonesia’s disaster agency said the number of dead had climbed to 1,763, mostly in Palu. Agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said many more people could be buried, especially in the Palu neighborhoods of Petobo and Balaroa, where more than 3,000 homes were damaged or sucked into deep mud when the Sept. 28 quake caused loose soil to liquefy.

“Based on reports from village chiefs in Balaroa and Petobo, some 5,000 people have not been found. Our workers on the ground are trying to confirm this,” he said at a news briefing in Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital.

Nugroho said that efforts to retrieve decomposed bodies in deep, soft mud were getting tougher and that some people may have fled or been rescued and evacuated. More than 8,000 either injured or vulnerable residents have been flown or shipped out of Palu, while others could have left by land, he said.

Officially, Nugroho said only 265 people are confirmed missing and 152 others still buried under mud and rubble, nine days after the magnitude 7.5 earthquake and powerful tsunami hit Palu and surrounding areas.

The government targets to end search operations by Thursday, nearly two weeks after the disaster, at which time those unaccounted for will be declared missing and considered dead, Nugroho said.

In Palu on Sunday, at least 200 people, including soldiers, filled the gray pews of the Protestant Manunggal church for a service.

They sang as a young girl in a black and white dress with a red bow danced in the aisle, prayed and listened to a 30-minute sermon from the pastor, Lucky Malonda. A woman in the front pew wept.

Min Kapala, a 49-year-old teacher, said she came to the city of more than 25 churches from an outlying area because her usual house of worship was destroyed and liquefaction moved a different piece of ground to its location.

“I’m here at this particular church because my own church is no more; it’s leveled, and on its location there’s a corn plant,” she said. “That was very strange to me.”

Outside the church, Malonda said the intensity of the disaster had taken even scientists by surprise and called it the will of God. Two people from his congregation were missing, he said.

“This is for sure part of godly intervention, not outside the power of almighty God, that can’t be predicted or planned for by anything,” Malonda said.

He said religious leaders are discussing holding inter-faith prayers but nothing has been agreed yet.

Protestants, Catholics and Charismatics make up about 10 percent of the population of Palu, the provincial capital of Central Sulawesi. The province has a history of violent conflict between Muslims and Christians, though tensions have calmed in the past decade. Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim country.

As searchers continued to dig through rubble Sunday, Central Sulawesi Gov. Loki Djanggola said local officials were meeting with religious groups and families of victims to seek their consent to turn neighborhoods wiped out by liquefaction into mass graves.

He said on local television that survivors in the Petobo, Balaroa and Jono Oge neighborhoods could be relocated and monuments be built in the areas, which now look like wastelands, to remember the victims interred there. Officials have said that it is not safe for heavy equipment to operate in those areas and that they fear the risk of the spread of disease from decomposed bodies.

While grappling with immediate relief needs, the government is also mapping out plans to help more than 70,000 people, including tens of thousands of children, who have been displaced by the disasters to rebuild their lives.

Social welfare officials have set up nurseries in makeshift tents as a stopgap to keep children safe and help them heal from the trauma.

Market vendors have resumed business and roadside restaurants were open in Palu, but long lines of cars and motorcycles still snarled out of gas stations.

In Jakarta, volunteers walked around thoroughfares empty of cars collecting donations for earthquake victims during the weekly car-free morning in the city center.</s>Officials in Indonesia fear more than 5-thousand people are still missing after last week's earthquake and tsunami.

Over 17-hundred people are known to have died in the twin disaster on the island of Sulawesi.

Charities say entire villages are buried under mountains of mud.

British ambassador to Indonesia Moazzam Malik says two planes containing aid from the UK have arrived in the country
The Indonesia's disaster agency confirms the deaths of 1,944 people in the double earthquake and tsunami. 5,000 people are still missing and presumed dead.