Jim Della-Giacoma, Jakarta – Indonesia said Saturday almost 500 people had died in the devastating riots which swept its capital this week as President Suharto moved to restore his shaken authority over the battered nation.
Military spokesman Brigadier-General Wahab Mokodongan told a news conference the death toll in four days of riots in Jakarta had reached 499 – many of them youngsters and women trapped in burning shopping malls while on a looting spree.
He said the military had restored peace in the city, but thousands of frightened residents and foreigners thought otherwise and thronged the airport to flee the country.
"ABRI (the military) apologizes to all sections of the nation and to the Indonesian people for the conditions which exist at the moment," Mokodongan said in a written statement.
"ABRI...will continue to work hard and is ready to risk all its credibility for the return of security and peace," he said.
"The situation in Jakarta and nearby areas at this time has already been controlled. For the international community, ABRI guarantees your security and hopes that you will continue to be calm," the spokesman added.
But the city's airport was jammed with expatriates and ethnic Chinese desperate for a flight to anywhere as more and more countries told their citizens to get out of Indonesia despite two days of relative calm in the capital.
Columns of armor cruised the streets and troops used loudspeakers to warn off rioters and encourage people cowering at home to resume normal life.
Expatriates at the airport said they feared that worse was to come and the houses of the rich would be the next target of the impoverished who rose up this week to loot and pillage and demand Suharto quit after three decades in power.
"We all live in big glitzy houses and the mobs were getting closer every day," said a British woman bound for Singapore with her husband. "They have burned half of the city already and sooner or later they are going to go for the places the rich live in." The death toll was expected to rise further as rescue workers inched their way into the charred and fragile ruins of the scores of buildings torched during four days of near anarchy.
More than 100 charred corpses were pulled out of one shopping mall in western Jakarta Saturday, 18 from another and 11 from a third, adding to the 100 already taken from the ruins of a fourth Friday.
The United States and Canada airlifted out some 800 of their nationals, mostly women, children and the elderly, escorted to a military airport in convoys of buses in the small hours.
The exercise was due to repeated Saturday night.
Japanese airlines laid on a dozen extra flights for those of an estimated 20,000 Japanese in Indonesia eager to get out.
Australia, which reckons it has around the same number in the country, said it would send chartered aircraft. Three extra planes from Singapore Airlines – which has seven scheduled flights a day from Jakarta – took out more than 1,100 people.
Malaysia sent two military planes and other countries announced extra flights or bigger planes to help the exodus.
Major cities were mostly quiet Saturday after riots which grew out of Tuesday's shooting by security forces of six student protesters demanding political reform.
Since the riots forced Suharto to cut short a visit to Egypt and rush back to his shattered capital, the 76-year-old president has let it be known he is back in charge.
He has made no public appearances or comments, but moved swiftly to dispel one cause of anger behind the riots – fuel price rises of up to 70 percent to slash subsidies.
That had been demanded by the International Monetary Fund in return for $40 billion to help Indonesia out of its worst economic crisis in decades.
Hours after Suharto's return Friday, the government cut them back by around 20 percent.
Saturday, Suharto was quoted as saying he would make a rare reshuffle of his cabinet, just two months after appointing it, and would pursue political reforms.
"In carrying out the heavy task of national development, a strong cabinet is needed and because of that the president will soon reshuffle the cabinet," Parliamentary Speaker Harmoko told reporters after meeting Suharto at his residence.
"The president will also take steps to protect the rights of citizens in accordance with his authority and reforms will go ahead."
It was far from clear how or even if this might address widespread demands for democratic reform.
Suharto has bowed only fractionally to months of student demands for his departure from office, saying reforms could be discussed but most could not be implemented constitutionally until the end of his seventh five-year term in 2003.
Asman Budisantoso, head of the University of Indonesia, a center of student protests for three months, told reporters he had met Suharto and broached the question of the succession.
"He replied very sweetly. He said the head of state was carrying out his responsibilities," Santoso said.