JAKARTA (AP): Flooding in Jakarta has affected around 75 percent of the city, an official said Monday as the death toll from the disaster hit 25. Some 340,000 others have been forced from their homes.
Storm waters that inundated scores of residential areas and shopping districts late last week were still three meters (feet)deep in places, witnesses and an official say.
"As of today, 75 percent of Jakarta remains flooded," said Anwar Arifin, from Jakarta's flood information center.
Meanwhile, boats ferried emergency supplies to desperate residents of as overflowing rivers again burst their banks following days of rain.
The Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMG) has forecast rain for the next two weeks.
Hundreds of people remained on the second floors of their houses Sunday, either trapped or unwilling to abandon them despite warnings that muddy water running four meters (13 feet)deep in places may rise in the coming days.
The government dispatched medical teams on rubber rafts into the worst-hit districts on Sunday amid fears that disease may spread among residents living in squalid conditions with limited access to clean drinking water.
Incessant rain over Jakarta and hills to its south since Thursday triggered the city's worst floods in recent memory,inundating tens of thousands of homes, school and hospitals in poor and wealthy districts alike.
Authorities have cut off electricity and the water supply in many districts.
Seasonal downpours cause dozens of landslides and flash floods each year in Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago of 17,000 islands, where millions live in mountainous areas or near fertile plains.
Jakarta regularly floods, though not on this scale. Dozens of slum areas near rivers are washed out each year. Residents either refuse or are too poor to vacate the districts
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