A huge earthquake killed at least 300 people with thousands more feared dead in northwestern Indonesia on Tuesday as tsunami warnings and panic spread across Indian Ocean rim states still smarting from the killer seaquake that struck three months ago.
The epicenter of the latest temblor, which measured 8.7 on the Richter scale, was only 200 miles (320 kilometers) south of the December 26 quake that sent giant waves crashing into 12 nations and killed over 273,000 people.
The authorities said that at least 300 people had been confirmed dead, but Vice President Yusuf Kalla said that reports from the island of Nias off Sumatra indicated 1,000 to 2,000 people had been killed.
The undersea quake struck about 200 kilometers off the west coast of Sumatra and prompted Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Thailand, among others, to issue warnings of imminent tsunamis.
Alerts rang out on television and radio, while police and local residents tried to shepherd people to safety away from the coast toward high ground.
But the giant tsunamis never materialized and three hours after the quake Indonesia and Thailand gave the all clear. Sri Lanka and India followed several hours later.
"There have been tsunamis recorded as a result of the quake, but apparently they were not destructive," said Dr. Laura Kong, director of the Hawaii-based International Tsunami Information Center.
But while the region was largely spared a new tsunami horror, the earthquake caused massive destruction on Nias, an island of 700,000 people, which is popular with surfers.
Agus Mendrofa, a district official, said that at least 80 percent of all multi-storey buildings in the main Nias city of Gunung Sitoli had been destroyed, leaving many people feared trapped under rubble.
He said that many victims had not received medical treatment as the main hospital had been hit by a blackout and many doctors had fled to nearby hills.
"Power poles fell and roads were broken. Electricity and fixed telephone lines are dead. Thousands of people have fled to the hills," Herman Laia, an environment official in the south of Nias, told Elshinta radio.
A woman who identified herself as Ping Ping said that no buildings were left intact in Teluk Dalam, the main town in southern Nias. "All buildings collapsed, there is nothing left," she said.
Mar'ie Muhammad, chairman of the Indonesian Red Cross, said that the first aid teams landed on Nias and the nearby island of Simeulue after traveling by light aircraft.
A military official said that a three-meter (10-foot) wave had smashed into a port on Simeulue, causing extensive damage. There were unconfirmed reports of casualties.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono delayed a planned trip to Australia and was making plans to visit Nias, his spokesman said.
The earthquake brought back memories of the December disaster in which a 9.0-magnitude quake triggered waves 15 meters high that sped across the Indian Ocean at speeds of up to 700 kilometers per hour.
Those waves killed more than 273,000 people including over 220,000 in Indonesia, 30,000 in Sri Lanka, 10,000 in India and 5,000 in Thailand. Over 2 million people were displaced and $10 billion of aid was pledged.
Governments also promised to create a high-tech tsunami early warning system for the Indian Ocean by mid-2006.
Although no formal warning system was yet in place, the Japan Meteorological Agency and the International Tsunami Information Center contacted countries around the Indian Ocean immediately after detecting the huge quake.
Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said that the makeshift warning system had worked well.
"Although our warning system is not yet complete, we managed to alert people in enough time for them to seek safety," he said.
Kerry Sieh, a seismologist with the United States Geological Survey, said that Monday's quake struck at 16:09 GMT and was one of the top 10 most powerful earthquakes in the last century.
Tremors shook many parts of Sumatra for three minutes, witnesses said, and rocked the neighboring countries of Malaysia and Singapore where people fled high-rise buildings.
"When the earthquake happened I rode my motorcycle to the airport because I was very afraid the tsunami would hit again," said university student Heri in Banda Aceh, the capital of Indonesia's Aceh province.
In northwestern Sri Lanka witnesses said that people ran to temples and churches where bells were rung to warn people to run to high ground. In the resorts of southwestern Thailand holidaymakers fled hotels as television flashed warnings.
Hundreds of people, with children yanked from their beds and still wearing pajamas, gathered at the town hall on the Thai island of Phuket.
Thai television showed people mounting motorcycles and climbing into pickup trucks as traffic clogged the streets leaving Phuket's Patong beach.
In India's Tamil Nadu state radio stations warned people to move away from the ocean.
"People are very tense as they fear that another tsunami is going to hit our coasts. Many of our fishermen have gone to the sea and we are praying for their safe return," said Xavier Lawrence, a priest in the town of Kanyakumari.
Jan Egeland, the UN's emergency relief coordinator, told reporters in New York that the organization would get helicopters in the air early on Tuesday over Sumatra to survey the damage.
"We are afraid that many of the structures that were damaged in the first major earthquake ... may collapse," Egeland said.
The quake caused tsunami alerts as far away as the Indian Ocean islands of Mauritius and Madagascar, which is over 4,000 kilometers from the epicenter.
Thousands feared dead after huge quake off Indonesia triggers tsunami panic
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