PANGANDARAN (Indonesia), July 18: A tsunami that swept through fishing villages and resorts on Indonesia’s Java island killed 368 people and more than 200 others are missing, officials said on Tuesday.

More than 54,000 people have been displaced, they said.

There was no warning before the waves struck on Monday, despite efforts to set up warning systems after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami left 230,000 dead or missing, including 170,000 in Indonesia.

But many residents and tourists on the southern Java coast recognised the signs and fled to higher ground as the sea receded before huge waves came crashing ashore.

“When the waves came, I heard people screaming and then I heard something like a plane about to crash nearby and I just ran,” Uli Sutarli, a plantation worker who was on hard-hit Pangandaran beach, said.

The waves washed cars, motorbikes and boats into hotels and storefronts, flattened homes and restaurants, and flooded rice fields up to 500 metres from the sea along a stretch of the densely populated coastline.

An official at the welfare ministry’s disaster management centre said the death toll had climbed to 368 while 235 people were missing. —Reuters