Fifty-one bodies have been exhumed as of noon Friday, but authorities said up to 200 people could have been killed on Wednesday in the hillside village of Sijeruk.

"Chances of finding anyone alive are slim," Umar Yulianto, a local government official involved with the rescue effort, told AFP by telephone.

Search coordinator Arif Sudaryanto said about 160 people were still under the mud and rocks, putting the estimated death toll at about 200. Other local officials put the estimated toll at about 140.

Yulianto, who works at the welfare office in Banjarnegara district, explained that villagers had been warned about the impending disaster but were unconvinced of the seriousness of the situation.

"They heard the signs and the village chief had warned them but they believed that they were safe," he said, noting that a cracking sound had preceded the pre-dawn landslide, which was triggered by days of heavy rainfall.

He said those who heeded the village chief's warning sought shelter at the mosque, located on higher ground, but some returned to their houses in the wee hours, before the torrent of mud and debris was unleashed.

The mosque, where about 30 people were reciting morning prayers, was buried along with about 100 homes in the hamlet.

"I guess some who stayed in the mosque believed that they were under divine protection -- just like in Aceh, where the only buildings standing after the tsunami were mosques," he said, referring to the December 2004 tsunami that devastated Indonesia's Aceh province.

Hundreds of rescue workers used backhoes and hand tools to dig into the deep wall of mud. As they unearthed the remains of the victims, they showed each body to villagers watching the efforts from behind a police line.

Residents cried as they identified the bodies of their loved ones and neighbors.

Sixteen victims of the landslide were buried in a mass grave on Thursday.

The landslide in Sijeruk, 370 kilometres (230 miles) east of Jakarta, is the second disaster to hit Java island this week. Both were caused by days of heavy rains and, activists charged, deforestation.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Friday met with residents displaced by flash floods that devastated villages in neighboring East Java province late Sunday and killed at least 77 people.

He promised the government would rebuild the flooded zones and help survivors.

Environmentalists partly blamed the disasters on massive logging as well as land conversion for farming on Java, one of the world's most densely populated islands, and called on the government to take action.

But Forestry Minister Malam Sambat Kaban denied that the landslide in Sijeruk was caused by logging and blamed unstable earth in the area.

"The truth is, I saw the forest from the helicopter and I didn't see any signs of logging because this forest is protected," he told reporters at the landslide site.

Flooding and landslides are not unusual during Indonesia's rainy season.

In 2003 more than 200 lives were claimed when flash floods tore through Bahorok, a popular riverside resort in North Sumatra province. Some officials denied deforestation was the cause of that tragedy.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.