Sumatra flood, landslide death toll rises to 115

The known death toll in the floods and landslides which hit the Indonesian island of Sumatra rose to 115 as meteorologists said the worst was over. By Wednesday morning, data from provincial officials and other reports put the death toll at 115 and the number of missing at 48. In the hardest hit province of West Sumatra, the bodies of 60 people were found, most of them killed by landslides, while 34 were still missing, a search and rescue official said. The head of the Meteorology and Geophysics Office in Jakarta, Sridiharto (Eds: one name), was quoted by the Antara news agency as saying that the worst of the rains were over for most of Sumatra. Sridiharto said the heavy rain in the northern half of the island had been caused by a tropical storm that had built up in the Indian Ocean. But the storm, code-named 3B, was now heading towards the Indian subcontinent and the rain would begin to let up in Sumatra, he said. However, he warned that another period of heavy rains may hit across the Indonesian archipelago in December and January with the coming of monsoon winds, AFP reports.