Rescuers work at the site of an earthquake-triggered landslide in Cugenang of Cianjur, West Java, Indonesia, Nov. 22, 2022. A total of 162 people were killed after a 5.6-magnitude earthquake hit Indonesia's West Java province on Monday, officials said. (Photo by Sandika Fadilah/Xinhua)

Indonesian authorities deployed heavy machinery, helicopters and thousands of personnel Thursday in a desperate effort to locate dozens trapped in rubble by an earthquake that killed 271 people, as hopes faded to find survivors.

Some have been pulled alive from the hulk of twisted metal and concrete in dramatic rescues in the town of Cianjur in West Java, including a 6-year-old boy who spent two days under the wreckage without food or water.

Officials said around 40 people are still missing and believed trapped, including a 7-year-old girl, as rescue efforts were delayed by hammering rains and aftershocks.

But the rescue of the young boy Azka alive, captured on video, gave relatives and rescuers a dash of optimism.

"Once we realised Azka was alive everybody broke into tears, including me," 28-year-old local volunteer Jeksen Kolibu told AFP on Thursday.

"It was very moving, it felt like a miracle."

In the worst-hit district of Cugenang, scores of rescue workers drilled on Thursday through big slabs of concrete and removed roof tiles at a destroyed house where they believed a young girl was buried as her distraught mother watched on.

The parents of 7-year-old Cika gave locations to rescuers for the delicate rescue mission, believing she was playing outside the house when the quake struck.

"She was playing outside, I was cooking in the kitchen, suddenly the earthquake happened, so fast, only two seconds, my house collapsed," her mother Imas Masfahitah, 34, told AFP at the scene.

"My instinct tells me she is here because she liked playing here," she added, referring to the house of the girl's grandmother across the street from the family home where the search is focused. "Whatever happens I will try to accept it."

Sastra Winata, a firefighter involved in the rescue, said workers feared she was "running and was buried, we found some motorbikes buried here."

The death toll from the Monday earthquake is expected to rise further with 2,000 people wounded, some of them critically, and at least two villages still cut off.

AFP