Jakarta (VNA) – The death toll fromthe 6.9-magnitude earthquake that hit the Indonesian tourist island of Lombok onAugust 5 had risen to 131 by the afternoon of August 8.

Up to 236 people were severely injured in thequake while 156,000 others have been displaced.

With 230 aftershocks, the quake also damagedtens of thousands of houses, along with many schools and worshipping places.

The National Agency for Disaster Management(BNPB)’s spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said on August 8 that  evacuation efforts have been stepped up butthe death toll will keep rising.

Muhammad Zainul Majdi, Governor of West NusaTenggara province which covers Lombok, said there was a dire need for medicalstaff, food and medicine in the worst-hit areas.

Hundreds of bloodied and bandaged victimshave been treated outside damaged hospitals in the main city of Mataram andother badly affected areas.

The scale of this quake is massive for WestNusa Tenggara, he said.

Arifin Muhammad Hadi, a spokesman for theIndonesian Red Cross, said in some villages he visited the destruction wasalmost 100 percent, all houses collapsed, roads were cracked and bridges werebroken.

The 6.9-magnitude quake came a week afteranother earthwauke on Lombok killed 17 people.

Indonesia, an archipelago of thousands ofislands, sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, a seismic activity hotspot.

It is frequently hit by earthquakes, most of them harmless. However, the regionremains acutely alert to tremors that might trigger tsunamis.-VNA