Strong earthquake of 8.7 strikes Indonesia

A massive earthquake strikes off the coast of Indonesia, triggering a tsunami alert. No translation.

An 8.7-magnitude quake, which struck under the sea off Indonesia's northern Aceh province, triggered a tsunami warning for the whole Indian Ocean, including Bangladesh’s Chittagong region.

According to a warning issued by Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, Chittagong may experience the tsunami wave arrival at 10:51pm local time.

However, Indonesia's disaster mitigation agency said they did not detect low tide that would indicate tsunami in Aceh, reports Reuters.

A tsunami is a series of waves and the time between successive waves can be five minutes to one hour.

The capital and different parts of the country jolted as the quake hit at 2:38:30pm, Shamsuddin Ahmed, an assistant director of Bangladesh Meteorological Department, told The Daily Star.

There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage in Bangladesh.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said it was not yet known whether a tsunami had been generated, but advised authorities to “take appropriate action”.

The region is regularly hit by earthquakes. The Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 killed 170,000 people in Aceh.

The US Geological Survey, which documents quakes worldwide, said the Aceh quake was centred 33km (20 miles) under the sea about 495km from Banda Aceh, the provincial capital.

It was initially reported as 8.9 magnitude but was later revised down to 8.7 by the USGS.

The tsunami warning said quakes of such a magnitude "have the potential to generate a widespread destructive tsunami that can affect coastlines across the entire Indian Ocean basin".

The tremor was felt as far away as Singapore, Thailand and India.

Reuters reports that people in the region were making their way to higher ground, but quoted Indonesian officials as saying there had been no immediate reports of damage of rising water levels in Aceh.

Indonesia

Indonesia's Disaster Mitigation Agency was sending a rescue team to Aceh, after the quake knocked out the province's electricity and send locals scrambling for higher ground.

"The quake was felt very strongly. Electricity is down, there's traffic jams to access higher ground. Sirens and Koran recitals from mosques are everywhere," said Sutopo, spokesman for Indonesia's disaster mitigation agency.

The Agency reported a 6.5-magnitude aftershock following the 8.7-magnitude temblor.

The BBC's Karishma Vaswani in the Indonesian capital Jakarta says there were reports of the ground shaking for up to five minutes. Contact with people in the immediate area around the quake has not been possible so far, says our correspondent.

Indonesia straddles the Pacific Ring of Fire, a zone of major seismic activity.

Tsunami threat in 6 Thai provinces

Thailand's national disaster prevention centre issued a tsunami warning for six southern provinces along the Anadaman coast on Wednesday after the earthquake, reported Reuters.

People in Phuket, Krabi, Ranong, Phangnga, Trang and Satun were ordered to move to higher ground because of a possible tsunami, an official with Thailand's National Disaster Prevention Centre told Reuters by telephone.