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JAKARTA : Indonesia issued a second tsunami alert on Wednesday after a 6.6-magnitude aftershock struck off the west coast of Sumatra following a massive quake hours earlier, the meteorology agency said.
The quake hit at 9:40 pm (1440 GMT), about 70 kilometres (45 miles) southwest of the town of Bengkulu, at a depth of 18 kilometres, the agency said by short text message.
"Tsunami potential, to be forwarded to the public," the message said.
Earlier, the Indonesian meteorology agency had called of its tsunami warning following a massive 8.2-magnitude earthquake which had struck off the west coast of Indonesia's Sumatra island.
That quake toppled buildings and had triggering a tsunami alert across the Indian Ocean region.
There was no immediate word on the full extent of casualties and damage, but at least two people were killed and dozens injured in the quake, which split open buildings 300 kilometres (185 miles) from the epicentre.
"At least one person died when he was hit by a falling tree when they were evacuating after the quake," Salamun Haris, an official from North Bengkulu district, told ElShinta radio.
"Dozens of people were injured in damaged buildings" across the district, he said, adding that hospital patients in the city of Argamakmur were being evacuated as a precaution to make room for quake casualties.
The state-run Antara news agency reported that a 25-year-old woman had been found dead in her collapsed house in Bengkulu city.
Her sister told the agency that the woman had been bathing her four-year-old son when the quake hit.
The boy's condition was unknown.
In the capital Jakarta 600 kilometres further south, high-rise towers wobbled, water sloshed from swimming pools and panicked office workers ran into the streets.
Elsewhere, power was knocked out and phone lines went dead.
The huge quake - anything over magnitude 7.0 is considered to have the possibility for massive damage and loss of life - was felt in neighbouring Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, where office buildings swayed and shook.
The US Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said an alert was in effect for the entire Indian Ocean area including Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and the Maldives - all affected by the devastating December 2004 Asian tsunami.
The Indonesia meteorology agency later said the danger had passed.
It said at least three major aftershocks, one of magnitude 6.1, were recorded after the quake, which hit on the eve of the start of the Muslim Ramadan holy month.
The undersea quake erupted around 1100 GMT some 100 kilometres southwest of the city of Bengkulu at a depth of roughly 30 kilometres, the United States Geological Survey said.
It adjusted an earlier report of magnitude 7.9 to 8.2.
The deputy chief official from North Bengkulu district told ElShinta radio that one person there had been killed by a falling tree while trying to evacuate, and that some buildings were "severely damaged."
Dozens of people were injured in damaged buildings, said the official, Salamun Haris.
The Bengkulu airport terminal was cracked but the runway was in good condition, another official said.
There were several reports that the damage did not at first seem severe.
"I saw some parts of houses crumbled to the ground but not huge damage. People ran out of their homes," said Ayu Claudia, a resident of Bengkulu in a brief conversation before the phone lines went down.
Budi Darmawan, a policeman in the Indonesian town of Mukomuko on the west coast of Sumatra, said buildings three storeys and higher had collapsed and that tsunami warning sirens had failed to activate.
"Buildings of three floors or more are either fissured or collapsed," he told ElShinta.
He said police raced through the streets on motorcycles, warning residents to move quickly to higher ground.
"The lights are out. We cannot see anything," Slamet Purwanto, a Bengkulu resident, told the Detikcom online news agency.
Malaysia, Sri Lanka, the Maldives and India all issued separate tsunami warnings telling residents to move away from the Indian Ocean coastline.
Sri Lanka later lifted its warning.
Indonesia has endured repeated major quakes in recent years, including the 2004 quake that unleashed a tsunami across the Indian Ocean.
It killed over 220,000 people in a dozen countries including some 168,000 in the Indonesian province of Aceh alone.
In May 2006, a quake rattled the country's main island of Java, killing more than 5,700 people and destroying some 300,000 homes.
Two months later, another quake on Java killed more than 600.
In March yet another large quake hit Sumatra, killing more than 70 people, flattening buildings and displacing more than 1,700 people.
Indonesia, an archipelago of some 17,000 islands, sits on the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, where continental plates meet - and where earthquakes are a regular and often deadly occurrence. - AFP/ms
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