New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says Tonga’s capital Nuku’alofa suffered “significant” damage from a powerful volcanic eruption that triggered a tsunami, but there have been no reports of injury or death.
Ardern’s comments on Sunday came as Pacific nations and humanitarian groups struggled to establish communications with Tonga, a day after the disasters cut telephone and internet connections, leaving its 1 lac 5 thousand residents virtually unreachable. Her government had made contact with the New Zealand embassy in Nuku’alofa. Meanwhile, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies’s (IFRC) Pacific Office in Suva, Fiji, said that it was monitoring the situation and had no updates on damages or casualties.