PORT BLAIR (India) - A MAJOR quake of magnitude 7.6 struck in the Indian Ocean off India's Andaman Islands early on Tuesday, triggering a tsunami watch for India, Myanmar, Indonesia, Thailand and Bangladesh.'The room shook for around 20 to 30 seconds, it was quite strong,' said Reuters correspondent Sanjit Kumar Roy in Port Blair, capital of the islands.
He said that in the northern part of Andaman Island, people ran out of their houses in panic. Police said there had been no reports so far of any damage.
The US Geological Survey said the quake, initially reported as a magnitude 7.7, struck at 1.55am (1955 GMT on Monday, 3.55am Singapore time). It was shallow, at a depth of 33km, and was centred 254km north of Port Blair.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a tsunami watch for the region.
'Earthquakes of this size have the potential to generate a destructive local tsunami and sometimes a destructive regional tsunami along coasts located usually no more than a thousand kilometres from the earthquake epicentre,' the tsunami centre said in its bulletin.
However, an official at the Indian National Center for Ocean Information Services said a tsunami warning had not been issued by his department.
'We have not issued a tsunami alert and are monitoring the water level changes in the region at the moment,' Ajay Kumar told Reuters by phone.
The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are a chain of small islands hundreds of miles east of India in the Indian Ocean.
A 7.6 magnitude quake is classified by the USGS as a major earthquake and is capable of widespread, heavy damage.
An even bigger quake in the Indian Ocean in 2004 caused a tsunami that killed some 228,000 people.
In Indonesia, a meteorology agency official said his agency was monitoring the Aceh area on the tip of Sumatra. So far there had been no reports of a tsunami in Indonesia but it could take two hours for one to reach the coastline. -- REUTERS
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