Nine Australian military personnel were presumed dead on Saturday after their navy helicopter crashed during a rescue mission to Nias, the Indonesian island devastated by an earthquake.
The Royal Australian Navy Sea King helicopter was involved in an aid effort along with around 1,500 Indonesian soldiers digging through the rubble of houses destroyed in the magnitude 8.7 quake on Monday night.
Rescuers pulled one Indonesian man alive from the rubble today but the UN says 1,300 people may have died in Gunungsitoli, the main town on Nias.
"Nine Australian Defence Force personnel on board the crashed helicopter are missing, presumed dead," a spokesman for the Australian Defence Department said.
The helicopter, from the HMAS Kanimbla, had 11 people on board including three crew, the spokesman said, but there was confusion about who else was on board.
In Jakarta, an Indonesian air force spokesman said the helicopter had evacuated earthquake victims and was on its way back to the Kanimbla. "But before it could reach the ship, it fell and burned ... residents saw three of its crew escape and they are now on the ship, but we don't know yet how many crew were in the helicopter."
There are concerns the death toll from the earthquake could rise as rescuers reach isolated parts of the island cut off by landslides and damage to roads. Deaths have also been reported on nearby islands.
But Singaporean and Mexican rescue workers pulled an Indonesian man from the rubble of his three-story shophouse on Saturday where he had been trapped for five days, giving some rare cheer to residents of the islands devastated by tremors.
They freed the man after digging down through chunks of concrete and other debris in a tense operation lasting about seven hours.
The 42-year-old was placed on a stretcher and taken to hospital. His two daughters and wife were presumed to have been killed. "I think my daughter was crushed by a concrete slab," he told reporters from his hospital bed. "I was behind and everything collapsed."
Soldiers had heard a voice calling for help from the rubble in the morning and alerted the foreign rescue teams, who managed to get food and water to the man while digging down. But rescuers who pulled several survivors from buildings earlier this week said there was little hope of finding anyone else alive.
Thousands of people are facing food and water shortages because the quake destroyed water mains and markets.
Heavy rains on Thursday and early yesterdat have hampered relief and rescue efforts, but increasing numbers of aid workers and supplies have begun to reach Nias. An Australian navy ship carrying 60 medical personnel docked in Nias this morning to help treat hundreds of injured.