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JAKARTA: Three people were injured on Indonesia's Simeulue island when a 7.5-magnitude quake struck Aceh province Wednesday, while many buildings were damaged, the health ministry said.
"Three people were injured with open wounds. There are no casualties so far but a lot of buildings were damaged," said senior health ministry official, Rustam Pakaya, adding that people had evacuated to the hills.
He said the information came from officials at a health clinic nearly four hours' travel from Sinabang, the island's only urban centre.
"Our staff on Simeulue are still closely monitoring the situation... There might be casualties there," he warned
Zainul Tahar, the head of Aceh's search and rescue office, told AFP that he had earlier spoken with officials at the port authority in Sinabang and was told there was no damage there, despite mass panic.
The earthquake-triggered Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004 killed some 168,000 people in Aceh, which is located at the northern tip of Sumatra. Indonesia was the nation worst hit by the tsunami.
Simeulue was one of the closest islands to the 2004 quake's epicentre, but the tsunami killed fewer than 10 people there partly because the nearly 80,000-strong population recognised the receding sea as a sign of disaster and fled.
In 2005, entire villages on Simeulue were destroyed by a quake which killed at least 17 people. - AFP/ac
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