Volunteers bury quake and tsunami victims in mass grave

(5 Oct 2018) Volunteers on Friday helped to bury more victims of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit the Indonesian city of Palu. A mass grave was dug on top of a mountain range outside the city. One week after a magnitude 7.5 quake spawned a deadly tsunami on the island of Sulawesi, countless people have yet to find their loved ones - both survivors and the dead. As of Thursday, the government put the death toll at 1,424, with 113 people missing. Many families, though, never registered their losses with police, while others failed to identify them before they were buried anonymously in mass graves. Ambulances and rescue vehicles bought six bodies to the grave within an hour on Friday morning. The bodies came in different coloured bags - black, yellow or orange - depending on which agency was handling them. Volunteer Asep Junaedi said "I feel a calling to do humanitarian work sincerely". "It is also worship for me because they are our brothers too. Even though they have become corpses, we must treat them properly." Asep and his colleague Muhamad Ardi have been working tirelessly to carry bodies to be buried at the mass grave over the last four days. "I cried every time I saw the dead victims", said Ardi. The number of bodies delivered to the grave had reached 643 by Friday. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...