Jakarta - A powerful earthquake jolted parts of Indonesia's Java and Sumatra islands on Wednesday evening, prompting government authorities to issue a tsunami warning. The quake, measuring 8.0 on the Richter scale, struck off the southwest coast of Sumatra Island about 6:10 pm (1110 GMT), shaking coastal regions there, the capital Jakarta on Java Island, and West Java's Banten province, said Fauzi, an official at Jakarta's Meteorology and Geophysics Agency.
"We have issued a warning that the quake could potentially trigger a tsunami," Fauzi told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
He said the quake took place about 159 kilometres south-west of the South Sumatran province of Bengkulu and was about 10 kilometres beneath the seabed.
A police official in Bengkulu province, on the southwest coast of Sumatra, told the Jakarta-based Elshinta radio station that he saw a three-story building collapse following the quake, but he had not received any immediate reports of casualties.
The officer, who identified himself as Budi Harsono, said the quake triggered panic among residents, in particular those living in nearby the beach areas. Many of them fled by motorcycle to higher ground in fear of a tsunami.
The tremblor and subsequent panic was a flashback to December 26, 2004, when a massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake triggered a tsunami that struck nine Asian nations and killed 177,000 people alone in Indonesia's Aceh province, which lies on the northern tip of Sumatra.
Budi Waluyo, another geophysics agency official in Jakarta, told
