On this muddy hillside in West Java, Indonesia's earthquake horror is laid bare

On a steep hillside, men with picks and shovels dig into the muddy earth. 

It's hard to believe just three days ago there were entire streets and homes where they're standing. 

The village of Cijedil has almost disappeared, since Monday's devastating earthquake triggered a landslide that buried everything in its path. 

Cucu Handayani was at home on Monday afternoon when the earthquake struck.

At first she thought little of it. Her own home was undamaged, and earthquakes are common in Java.  

This one was only 5.6 on the Richter scale. 

But then her daughter, Adinda, called in a panic from the shop where she worked, telling her mother she couldn't contact her husband Sahroni.

The young couple had been married only eight months, and lived with his mother and brother in the same village.

When Adinda raced home, the house was gone.

An entire section of the village had been buried under the landslide.

There was no sign of most of the houses or anyone in them, except for patches of debris sticking incongruously out of the soil.

"I couldn't believe what I saw," Cucu said as she wept.

"All the houses were covered by dirt. I couldn't work out what had happened to them. Because we couldn't contact anyone.

"We tried to call everyone's number, from my daughter's house. But nobody answered.

"Since then we've been in shock, but what can we do?"

Indonesia's President Joko Widodo has promised compensation for the families of the 268 people killed in the quake, and sent in 12,000 soldiers and 2,000 police to help search for the dead and missing.

But many villages surrounding the town where the epicentre struck are still difficult to access, with several major roads cut by landslides.

Heavy rain and fresh aftershocks late on Tuesday afternoon triggered another landslide that hampered recovery efforts late in the day.

The possibility of more aftershocks looms, threatening to further destabilise the disaster zone.

And as Indonesia enters its monsoonal rain season, people whose houses have been destroyed are in desperate need for any brief respite from the weather.

Many are sleeping in tents and under tarpaulins, as they wait for more permanent assistance to arrive.

Searching for answers in the debris

Cijedil is a tight-knit community, where even residents whose houses look just as they did the day before the earthquake struck are joining in the desperate dig to find loved ones. 

Adinda's neighbour Nanang Durrahman has spent days searching for six of his relatives, including his daughter-in-law and his two-year-old son. 

He and surviving neighbours have tried desperately to dig through the earth, but most of the houses are too deep to reach.