Indonesia: Floodwaters flooded parts of Jakarta, killing five people, leaving three missing and nearly 20,000 unable to return home.

Heavy rains caused the presidential palace, a large hospital and entire residential areas in the Indonesian capital Jakarta to flood yesterday. Five people died from drowning or electric shocks in the city's heavily flooded areas, including two teenagers, the Indonesian Disaster Mitigation Agency said.

The interdisciplinary rescue team is continuing to search for three missing people, according to Agus Wibowo Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman. He added that nearly 20,000 people were evacuated to emergency shelters.

Some areas of the capital were flooded more than a meter deep, but the water began to withdraw from today. Earlier, rescuers had to use steam boats to get people out of the seriously flooded districts.

Many parts of the city were paralyzed as rising water caused thousands of buildings to flood, causing blackouts and disrupting railway operations.

Fachri Radjab, an official at Indonesia's Department of Meteorology, Climate and Geophysics, said tropical storm Esther in Carpentaria Bay, Australia, and Typhoon Ferdinand in the Indian Ocean caused heavy rains in west of the island of Java, including the province of West Java and many other parts of the country. The agency also warned that heavy rain will continue today.

Jakarta is witnessing a serious subsidence and very vulnerable to flooding during the rainy season. Indonesian President Joko Widodo last year announced plans to relocate the capital to Borneo.

Jakarta and surrounding areas have about 30 million people. The city on the first day of this year was hit by a record rainstorm, causing floods, killing 66 people and displacing 175,000 people.