Death toll in Indonesia's Sumatra quake nears 500: gov't

Local residents look for useful things in the rubble of a collapsed and burnt building in the Sumatran city of Padang, Indonesia, on Oct. 2, 2009.(Xinhua/Yu Yuewei)

PADANG, Indonesia, Oct. 2 -- The Indonesia's West Sumatra provincial disaster management coordination unit put the death toll in Wednesday's earthquake in Padang and its neighboring town of Pariaman to 448 as of Friday afternoon, with over 2,000 others injured.

Locals walk past a collapsed building in the Sumatran city of Padang, Indonesia, on Oct. 2, 2009.(Xinhua/Yue Yuewei)

The unit said 197 of the fatalities were found to be in Padang,184 in Pariaman.

Head of the unit Ade Edward added that the quake had severely damaged nearly 12,000 houses, 55 office buildings and 52 worship places.

Over 300 people were feared trapped under the rubbles of two after-school course buildings, a hotel and a foreign language campus in Padang, he added.

Ade said the unit had registered 12 foreign and international organizations that would provide humanitarian assistance to disaster victims. They include the Ausaid, USAID, International Organization on Migration (IOM) and United Nations Development Program (UNDP).