One man collapsed over the corpse of a small child, her body streaked with mud. Pangandaran's hospitals were packed with injured people.

"I was with my daughter in my house by the beach. I was preparing to leave the house when I saw the water had receded," said Yati Maryati.

"I couldn't hold on to my daughter when the wave suddenly struck and swept away my house. There's still no news of her," she cried, sitting in a hospital bed with bruises and bandages all over her body.

Some of the homeless were using floormats and sheets of plastic to make temporary shelters on hillsides on Tuesday. Relief agencies had yet to supply tents in the Pangandaran area, although truckloads of aid were beginning to arrive.

"People have started returning to their houses, although most of them are still staying on higher ground," said Pangandaran disaster centre officer Dwi Hasyim Ashari.

The U.S. Geological Survey rated the undersea quake's magnitude at 7.7. with its epicentre about 180 km (110 miles) off the hardest hit spot on Java's southern coast.

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 the 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."

Indonesia's 17,000 islands sprawl along a belt of intense volcanic and seismic activity, part of what is called the "Pacific Ring of Fire".

Earthquakes are frequent. In May, one near the city of Yogyakarta in central Java killed more than 5,700 people.