Men prepare the body of an earthquake victim for burial in Cianjur, West Java, Indonesia, on Tuesday. AP

Indonesia's President Joko Widodo said on Tuesday the government would hand out compensation to victims and their families after an earthquake struck the country's most populous province, killing 162.

Jokowi, as the president is known, visited the epicentre of the quake, the town of Cianjur in West Java province, and ordered rescue teams to prioritise saving people trapped under rubble and to urgently access areas blocked off by landslides.

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Rescuers on Tuesday searched for survivors buried under rubble after an earthquake on Indonesia's main island of Java killed 162 people, injured hundreds and left more feared trapped in collapsed buildings.

The epicentre of the shallow 5.6-magnitude quake on Monday was near the town of Cianjur in Indonesia's most-populous province West Java, where most of the victims were killed as buildings collapsed and landslides were triggered.

A villager carries his injured daughter following a 5.6-magnitude earthquake in Cianjur, Indonesia, on Tuesday. AFP

As bodybags emerged from crumpled buildings, rescue efforts turned to the missing and any survivors still under debris in areas made hard to reach by the mass of obstacles thrown onto the town's roads by the quake.

One of the dozens of rescuers, 34-year-old Dimas Reviansyah, said teams were using chainsaws and excavators to break through piles of felled trees and debris to reach areas where civilians were believed trapped.

"I haven't slept at all since yesterday, but I must keep going because there are victims who have not been found," he said.

"Today our focus is to evacuate victims who were buried by the landslide," Rudy Saladin, a local military chief, told AFP.

"There's a possibility there are still more."

A woman walks past the ruins flattened by Monday's earthquake in Cianjur, West Java, on Tuesday. AP

Indonesia's national disaster mitigation agency, or BNPB, said at least 25 people were still buried under the rubble in Cianjur as darkness fell Monday.

Some of the dead were students at an Islamic boarding school while others were killed in their homes when roofs and walls fell in on them.

"The room collapsed and my legs were buried under the rubble. It all happened so fast," 14-year-old student Aprizal Mulyadi told AFP.

He said was pulled to safety by his friend, Zulfikar, who later died after getting trapped under rubble.

"I was devastated to see him like that, but I could not help him," he said.