Indonesia Rescuers Race to Find Dozens Missing after Quake

“She was playing outside, I was cooking in the kitchen, suddenly the earthquake happened, so fast, only two seconds, my house collapsed,” her mother Imas Masfahitah, 34, told AFP at the scene.

“My instinct tells me she is here because she liked playing here,” she added, referring to the house of the girl’s grandmother where the search is focused.

“Whatever happens I will try to accept it.”

Sastra Winata, a firefighter involved in the rescue, said workers feared she was “running and was buried.”

By Thursday afternoon, workers had prepared a stretcher to be ready for her discovery dead or alive.

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The death toll from the Monday earthquake is expected to rise further with 2,000 people wounded, some of them critically, and at least two villages still cut off.

Thousands of emergency workers were using excavators to break through blocked roads to access the villages and deploying helicopters to drop vital aid to people still trapped there.

The rescue operation is expected to continue beyond the 72-hour window viewed as the best period to find victims alive.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo visited Cianjur again on Thursday, and said 39 people were believed missing in the district of Cugenang alone.