Authorities say 79 people remain missing and thousands of families have been displaced from their homes across Sumatra.The death toll from floods and landslides on the western Indonesian island of Sumatra this week has risen to 174, a disaster official said, with about 80 more people still missing, as a punishing tropical storm system and heavy monsoon rains have battered the region.“As of this afternoon, we have recorded that for the entire North Sumatra province, there have been 116 deaths and 42 people are still being searched for,” National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) chief Suharyanto announced on Friday.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listHe said another 35 were killed in the island’s Aceh province and another 23 in West Sumatra.While the rain had stopped, 79 people were still missing and thousands of families were displaced, he added.Residents in Sumatra’s Padang Pariaman region, where a total of 22 people died, had to cope with water levels at least 1 metre (3.3ft) high, and had still not been reached by search and rescue personnel on Friday.In the town of Batang Toru, in northern Sumatra, residents on Friday buried seven unclaimed victims in a mass grave. The decomposing bodies, wrapped in black plastic, were lifted from the back of a truck onto a wide plot of land as onlookers covered their noses.Communications remained down in some parts of the island, and authorities were working to restore power and clear roads blocked by landslide debris, said Abdul Muhari, spokesman for Indonesia’s national disaster mitigation agency.Indonesia would continue to …
