The death toll from a tsunami that hit fishing villages and resorts on Indonesia's Java island following an undersea earthquake has risen to 340.
At least four non-Indonesians were among the dead, 156 people were missing and 28,000 people were displaced, Red Cross officials said.
No warnings were reported ahead of the waves despite regional efforts to establish early warning systems after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed 230,000, including 170,000 in Indonesia.
But many residents and tourists recognised the signs and fled to higher ground as the sea receded before huge waves came crashing ashore. "When the waves came, I heard people screaming and then I heard something like a plane about to crash nearby and I just ran," Uli Sutarli, a plantation worker who was on hard-hit Pangandaran beach.
The waves flung cars, motorbikes and boats into hotels and storefronts, flattened homes and restaurants, and flooded rice fields up to 500 metres from the sea along a stretch of the densely populated southern Java coastline.
A Belgian tourist in Pangandaran, a popular spot for surfers with many small hotels on the beach, said his warning came when a waitress at a beachside bar ran by him screaming.
"I saw this big cloud of dark sea water coming up to me. So I grabbed the bag and started running ... and then the water grabbed me and pulled me under and I was thinking this is the end, I'm going down." He said he grabbed onto a cooler and rode the wave into a nearby hotel.
The US Geological Survey rated the undersea quake's magnitude at 7.7. with its epicentre about 180 kilometres off the hardest hit spot on Java's southern coast.
The US-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said the quake would not trigger "a destructive widespread tsunami threat", but could cause some local tsunamis. No tsunami warning system has been set up for the southern coast of Java.
An Indonesian warning system was supposed to be up and running by now after the 2004 tsunami, the worst on record, but it has stalled. Asked how many tsunami buoys Indonesia has in operation since it launched a first stage of its warning system off the coast of Aceh in northern Sumatra last year, a government official assigned to the project said: "none".