TANJUNG LESUNG: Residents searching through debris in Tanjung Lesung, Banten province on Monday — AFP JAKARTA, Dec 24 (Agencies): Coastal residents near Indonesia's Anak Krakatau volcano have been warned to keep away from beaches amid fears it could trigger a new tsunami.
On Saturday, giant waves crashed into coastal towns on the islands of Sumatra and Java, killing at least 281 people and injuring 1,016.
It is thought that volcanic activity set off undersea landslides which in turn generated the killer waves.
Anak Krakatau erupted again on Sunday, spewing ash and smoke.
Video shot from a charter plane captured the magnitude of the volcanic event in the Sunda Strait, between Sumatra and Java.
Rescue efforts are being hampered by blocked roads but heavy lifting equipment is being transported to badly hit areas to help search for victims.
The spokesman for the National Disaster Management Agency, Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, told a news conference that another tsunami is a possibility because of the continued volcanic eruptions of Anak Krakatau.
"Recommendations from [the] Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysical Agency are that people should not carry out activities on the beach and stay away from the coast for a while," he said.
Anak Krakatau, which emerged in 1927 from the caldera that was formed during the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883, has seen increased activity in recent months with people asked to avoid the area around its crater.
On Monday Mr Sutopo put out a series of tweets explaining why there was no early warning for this tsunami. He said that Indonesia's early warning system is set up to monitor earthquakes but not undersea landslides and volcanic eruptions, which can also generate deadly waves.
But, he added, that with 13 per cent of the world's volcanoes in Indonesia alone, it was crucial for the country to develop such system.
He confirmed there was no tsunami advance warning system the night of the disaster, adding that because of lack of funds, vandalism to the buoys and technical faults there had been no operational tsunami warning system since 2012.
The tsunami struck at 21:30 local time (14:30 GMT) during a local holiday, with few of the warning signals that might have come had it been generated by an earthquake.
Meanwhile, Russia is ready to provide assistance in creating a natural disaster early warning system for Indonesia, where over 280 people have been killed in a devastating tsunami, chief of Russia' state space corporation Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin said on Monday.
"We are ready to provide assistance for Jakarta in creating a natural disaster warning system. We have invited Indonesia's Ambassador to familiarize with the possibilities of Russia's orbital system of the Earth's remote sensing," Rogozin wrote on Twitter.
A tsunami struck areas of the Sundra Strait separating the islands of Java and Sumatra on the night of December 22. A spokesman for Indonesia's National Agency for Disaster Management (BNPB), Sutopo Nugroho, said the death toll has reached 281 and over 1,000 people have been injured.
At the moment, 57 people have gone missing. The disaster is believed to have been caused by the eruption of the Anak Krakatau volcano.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo admitted that the country's agencies had been unable to alert citizens about the tsunami threat. The president set the task to check the equipment and immediately replace non-effective elements of the nationwide tsunami early warning system.
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