Flood-hit Indonesians battle mud and trauma

In Indonesia’s North Sumatra, Rosmina wades into her home through soupy grey-brown mud that reaches her knees, searching for belongings she can extract after deadly flooding submerged her village.

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More than 500 people have been killed and as many again remain missing after days of torrential rain and a rare tropical storm battered Indonesia’s Sumatra island.

Rosmina, who like many Indonesians uses a single name, described fleeing her home in terror when the floodwaters arrived last week.

"Someone ran from the garden,” she told AFP outside her home in Tapanuli.

"Come on, run, run, the big water’s coming!” he said. So I immediately ran to save my child,” she said.

"The water... was already up to their knees."

She fished mud-sodden clothes and a small wardrobe daubed in the same grey mud from her house, but quickly conceded defeat.

"My home, it is destroyed,” she said.