Tuesday, May 30 2006 10:04 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Bantul (Indonesia): The death toll from the Indonesian earthquake rose past 5,400 today (May 30, 2006) as hundreds of thousands of homeless survivors spend another night in the rain waiting for much-needed relief.

Familes across the quake zone in central Java province huddled under rudimentary tents made of plastic sheeting and bamboo poles to escape the rain as United Nations agencies pledged to speed up the flow of aid.

In many cases, straw mats were the only protection from the increasingly damp ground.

Indonesia has been struggling to cope with the scale of the disaster. Aid slowly began to reach hard-hit areas yesterday, but President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said better coordination of aid efforts was vital.

International agencies and foreign governments have begun delivering tents and tarpaulins to those in need, but the Red Cross has estimated there are 200,000 homeless people and supplies are not yet sufficient.

The social affairs ministry said 5,427 were confirmed to have died in the 6.3 magnitude quake centred around the district of Bantul, south of the royal city of Yogyakarta. Many thousands more are injured.

UN emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland, who helped oversee tsunami relief in Indonesia's Aceh province in 2004, said the effort should be quicker in reaching quake victims.

"This time I think it's going to be easier because Java is not as remote as Aceh," he told sources.

"We are now able to help in a matter of hours after an earthquake strikes," Egeland said.

"We are better coordinated now than ever before," he said.

But even as rescue teams and aid workers fanned out across the quake zone, the injured were still spilling out of hospitals and power cuts hampered rescue work.

Desperate victims could be seen standing along the sides of roads, holding up pails and boxes to beg for money and waving signs asking for help.

President Yudhoyono, who visited survivors, acknowledged yesterday that aid was slow to arrive.

"We have to improve coordination, both between the government and the regions, from one region and another, and coordination with foreign parties and non-governmental organisations," he said.

Hospitals overwhelmed with five times their normal patient load begged for more medical staff and supplies to treat the thousands of injured who overflowed from their wards, raising fears of the spread of disease.

In Geneva the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which is run by England, oversaw a meeting yesterday of aid agencies to help organise the international response.

"The most urgent needs to be delivered within three days are three field hospitals, with a capacity of 100 beds each, medical supplies mostly for orthopaedic treatment, generators, tents and shelter items," OCHA spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs told sources.

She said the Red Cross was ready to deliver 10,000 tents. But "more will be needed," she warned.

The orthopaedic supplies are needed to cope with the many broken bones suffered in the quake, which reduced many houses to rubble. Hopes faded of finding anyone still alive in the wreckage.