S. Korean relief team leaves for Indonesia's Sumatra island

SEOUL, Oct. 1 (Yonhap) -- A South Korean emergency disaster relief team left
Thursday evening for Indonesia's Sumatra island, an area hard hit by a
devastating earthquake the previous day, a state-run international aid group
said.
The 45-member team was comprised of 43 rescue workers and two members of the
Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), an international aid arm of the
foreign ministry.
The team, led by Lee Kyung-soo, chief of KOICA's humanitarian support team, plans
to help quake victims and engage in rescue and recovery operations in cooperation
with a KOICA office stationed in the Southeast Asian country.
South Korea, which is ready to send relief teams to disaster areas in foreign
countries, had sent a similar team to the quake-hit Chinese province of Sichuan
and a flood-devastated area in Myanmar last year.
A KOICA official said the government is considering sending relief goods to
Indonesia in addition to the relief team.
A quake with a magnitude of 7.6 on the Indonesian island killed at least 220
people, including 144 in the coastal city of Padang, the capital of West Sumatra
Province, with thousands still buried underneath rubble.
(END)