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Death toll in Indonesia's twin quake-tsunami disaster passes 1,400 as rescuers scramble to locate survivors. The death toll in  Indonesia 's twin quake-tsunami disaster has climbed above 1,400, with time running out to rescue survivors five days after the disaster struck. Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, spokesman for Indonesia's disaster agency spokesperson, said the official death toll stood at 1,407 on Wednesday, with thousands injured and more than 70,000 displaced from their homes. Food, water, fuel and medicine was still slow to reach the hardest-hit areas outside the city of Palu on Sulawesi island, and the UN has warned of "vast" unmet needs there. Rescue efforts have been hampered by a lack of heavy machinery, severed transport links and the scale of the damage. Almost 200,000 people need urgent help, the UN's humanitarian office said, among them tens of thousands of children, with an estimated 66,000 homes destroyed or damaged by the magnitude 7.5

PALU, Indonesia - The extent of the devastation caused by an earthquake and tsunami on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi should become clearer on Tuesday as rescuers push into remote areas that have been out of contact for more than three days. Officials fear the death toll will rise into the thousands. Indonesia has said it would accept offers of international aid, having shunned outside help earlier this year when an earthquake struck the island of Lombok. The number of confirmed deaths stood at 844 on Tuesday, most of them in Palu, the main city in the disaster zone, where rescuers were hunting for victims in the ruins. "We suspect there are still some survivors trapped inside," the head of on rescue team, Agus Haryono, told Reuters at the collapsed seven-storey Hotel Roa Roa. About 50 people were believed to have been trapped when the hotel was brought down by the 7.5 magnitude earthquake on Friday. The quake triggered tsunami waves as high as six meters