GUNUNGSITOLI, Indonesia - Nine Australian military personnel were presumed dead on Saturday after their navy helicopter crashed during a rescue mission to Nias, the Indonesian island devastated by an earthquake.

The helicopter was involved in an aid effort along with around 1,500 Indonesian soldiers digging through the rubble of houses destroyed in the magnitude 8.7 quake on Monday night.

Rescuers pulled one Indonesian man alive from the rubble on Saturday but the U.N. says 1,300 people may have died in Gunungsitoli, the main town on Nias.

"Nine Australian Defense Force personnel on board the crashed helicopter are missing, presumed dead," a spokesman for the Australian Defense Department told Reuters.

The Royal Australian Navy Sea King helicopter crashed near Gunungsitoli shortly after 7:30 p.m. Australian eastern time (0930 GMT), a spokesman said.

The helicopter, from the HMAS Kanimbla, had 11 people on board including three crew, the spokesman said, but there was confusion about who else was on board.

In Jakarta, Indonesian air force spokesman Sagom Tambun said by telephone the helicopter had evacuated earthquake victims and was on its way back to the Kanimbla.

"But before it could reach the ship, it fell and burned ... residents saw three of its crew escape and they are now on the ship, but we don't know yet how many crew were in the helicopter," the spokesman said.

Alive

There are concerns the death toll from the earthquake could rise as rescuers reach isolated parts of the island cut off by landslides and damage to roads.

Deaths have also been reported on nearby islands.

But Singaporean and Mexican rescue workers pulled an Indonesian man from the rubble of his three-story shophouse on Saturday where he had been trapped for five days, giving some rare cheer to residents of the islands devastated by tremors.

They freed the man after digging down through chunks of concrete and other debris in a tense operation lasting about seven hours.

The 42-year-old ethnic Chinese man, Hendra, was placed on a stretcher and taken to hospital. His two daughters and wife were presumed to have been killed.

"I think my daughter was crushed by a concrete slab," he told reporters from his hospital bed. "I was behind and everything collapsed."

Soldiers had heard a voice calling for help from the rubble in the morning and alerted the foreign rescue teams, who managed to get food and water to Hendra while digging down.

"It's a miracle, it's a miracle! I can't believe what is happening in my heart and mind right now," said Omar Flores, 30, a rescuer from Mexico City who was drenched in sweat.

But rescuers who pulled several survivors from buildings earlier this week said there was little hope of finding anyone else alive.

As relief teams dug towards Hendra, others pulled a male body from the ruins of a house next door to wails of grief from relatives.

Aid Arrives

Relief workers are trying to reach thousands of people cut off from aid in the area off Sumatra island near Aceh province, where another quake in December triggered a tsunami that killed or left missing nearly 300,000 people along Indian Ocean shores.

"People (aid workers) are moving out of town for the first time in a serious way today," Oxfam official Alex Renton told Reuters by telephone from Gunungsitoli.

"Outside town, things are still very unclear."

Renton estimated only about 10 percent of the 5,600 sq km (2,100 sq mile) island had been assessed by aid agencies.

Reuters correspondents who rode by motorbike from Gunungsitoli along the road to Teluk Dalam town some 120 km (75 miles) south on Friday saw widespread damage to houses, bridges and roads and little sign of aid reaching people.

Thousands of people are facing food and water shortages because the quake destroyed water mains and markets.

"There is no problem with the amount of food. The problem lies with the distribution," Vice President Jusuf Kalla told reporters after meeting local officials on Nias.

Kalla said the government was sending more ships and helicopters from the mainland and would try to restore the water supply within a week.

Heavy rains on Thursday and early on Friday have hampered relief and rescue efforts, but increasing numbers of aid workers and supplies have begun to reach Nias.

An Australian navy ship carrying 60 medical personnel docked in Nias on Saturday morning to help treat hundreds of injured.