JAKARTA, Feb 7: Residents in Jakarta sifted through mud and debris on Wednesday to salvage their belongings as floodwaters that had engulfed their homes in and around the Indonesian capital began at last to recede.

The slow clean-up operation got underway after days of flooding killed 50 people, according to new figures, and forced several hundred thousand more to abandon their homes.

However, some 263,000 people were still holed up in temporary safe shelters across Jakarta and the neighbouring satellite towns of Tangerang, Bekasi and Depok, said Rustam Pakaya of the health ministry’s crisis centre.

An official at the centre said the water levels in many parts of Jakarta had now lowered significantly.

Residents battled to recover what they could of their possessions.

Mud-covered piles of mattresses, clothes and pieces of wood and fittings torn from flood-devastated homes were strewn across alleys.

Widi managed to salvage a large framed photograph of himself and his wife and a meagre bag of other belongings from the mud-plastered wreckage of their house in West Jakarta.

Others were already busy cleaning up and drying sodden belongings on their fences and roofs.

Some 200 people, mostly women and children, demonstrated outside parliament to demand Jakarta governor Sutiyoso apologise for the floods and step down, the detikcom news portal said. He has been criticised for not doing enough to prevent the disaster.Markets reopened, although there were fewer customers than normal and many people had to wade through the water to buy what they needed.

The Jakarta police traffic management centre identified 30 areas in the city and Tangerang where the floodwater levels remained high enough to render them inaccessible to traffic.

National Development Planning Minister Paskah Suzetta has estimated losses from the flooding – in infrastructure damage and loss in state revenues – at a minimum $453 million.

The insurance industry could face claims reaching more than 400 billion rupiah, said Frans Sahusilawane, chairman of the Association for Indonesian General Insurers.—AFP