Jakarta - A powerful 8.0-magnitude earthquake jolted parts of Indonesia's Java and Sumatra islands on Wednesday evening, prompting government authorities to issue a tsunami watch that was later withdrawn for Indonesia - but not for nearby nations. The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre, which measured the quake's magnitude at 8.2 in the Richter scale, issued a tsunami watch to 27 Indian Ocean rim nations, including India and Sri Lanka, where it could take up to three hours to hit.
The governments of India and Sri Lanka also issued tsunami alerts after the quake.
The quake struck off the southwest coast of Sumatra Island at 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.
The agency issued a tsunami warning for coastal areas on Sumatra and Java, which was called off around 8 p.m. because too much time had passed for a wave to hit, Fauzi, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
Reports from Bengkulu province, on Sumatra's southwest coat, said panicky residents fled out of damaged buildings and into the streets, many running for higher ground in fear of tsunami waves. In Jakarta, scared
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 Adiputro, chief of staff of the National Disaster Coordinating Agency, told
