The death toll from Indonesia's massive earthquake will likely double as officials on Saturday reached rural communities wiped out by landslides that buried more than 600 people under mountains of mud, most of them guests at a wedding celebration. Roughly 400 people were at a communal wedding in Pulau Aiya village when Wednesday's 7.6 magnitude quake unleashed a torrent of mud, rock and felled palm trees, said Rustam Pakaya, the head of Indonesia's Health Ministry crisis center. "They were sucked 30 meters (100 feet) deep into the earth," he said. "Even the mosque's minaret, taller than 20 meters (65 feet), disappeared."

This is an aerial view of an area affected by earthquake-triggered landslide in Padang Pariaman, West Sumatra, Indonesia, Saturday, Oct. 3, 2009. Wednesday's 7.6 magnitude temblor devastated a stretch of more than 60 miles (100 kilometers) along the western coast of Sumatra island.(AP Photo/Dita Alangkara).
Virtually nothing remained of four villages that had dotted the hillside of the Padang Pariman district in Indonesia's West Sumatra just three days ago, said officials and an Associated Press photographer who flew over the devastated area.
The number of fatalities in the disaster will jump to more than 1,300 if all those people are confirmed dead. The government's death toll on Saturday held steady at 715, most reported in the region's badly hit capital of 900,000, Padang, where aid efforts are concentrated. As many as 3,000 people had been declared missing before news about the obliterated villages emerged, while 2,400 were hospitalized and tens of thousands of people are believed to have been displaced.
An AP photographer who flew over Padang Pariaman district in a helicopter saw several landslides in the area.


Damaged houses are seen in this aerial image of an area affected by earthquake-triggered landslide in Padang Pariaman, West Sumatra, Indonesia, Saturday, Oct. 3, 2009. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara).
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Damaged houses are seen in this aerial image of an area affected by earthquake-triggered landslide in Padang Pariaman, West Sumatra, Indonesia, Saturday, Oct. 3, 2009. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara).
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