JAKARTA, Feb. 27 (Xinhua) -- The number of death toll from floods in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta and its surrounding areas rose to nine on Thursday with over 62,000 others were shifted to shelters, a senior official of a disaster agency said.
As many as 48,732 people took shelters in West Java province's town of Bekasi and 13,752 others in Karawang district still in the province, spokesman for the National Disaster Management Agency Agus Wibowo said.
The floods which started on the weekend and peaked on Tuesday have receded in several spots, the spokesman told Xinhua in a text message.
Tropical cyclone Esther in the Gulf of Carpentaria of Australia and tropical cyclone Ferdinand in the Indian Ocean were blamed for the disaster as they had triggered heavy downpours in the areas that have made the excessive waters submerge the capital city and the surrounding territories, according to a senior official of the Indonesian Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency, Fachri Radjab.
This week's floods and landslides are the second natural disaster striking in and around the capital this year, as over 67 people were killed and about 40,000 were displaced during the floods and landslides in the New Year's Eve.
