March 27: A dam burst its banks ' near ' the Indonesian capital '` Jakarta early on Friday, drowning 52 people in a deadly torrent of muddy water that flooded hundreds of homes, health ministry officials said. Dozens of others were '' missing after the dam burst overnight while people were asleep, giving them little chance to flee a wall of water that came crashing into low-lying homes and that residents compared to a tsunami. Houses and concrete buildings were flattened and buckled by the force of the water, which left many survivors in the Jakarta suburb of Cireundeu trapped on rooftops waiting to be rescued. "This disaster happened so suddenly," said Uanang Susanto, `, an official with ' the health ministry's crisis centre. "Because people were sleeping they couldn't get away." He estimated up to 500 homes were destroyed or submerged after heavy rains caused the breach in the earthen dam at the edge of Situ Gintung lake in Cireundeu. The water in some places was six metres high. "Residents are being evacuated. About half of them are still on rooftops," said Rustam Pakaya, who heads the crisis centre. A nearby university assembly hall was converted into a makeshift morgue, where mud-smeared residents searched for> missing loved ones among the bodies of the dead lined up on the floor. Ghufron, a 17-year-old student, said he narrowly escaped waters that crashed into his home, but an uncle was dead and three other relatives were missing.