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New tsunami warning
30/12/2004 09:07 - (SA)
Nagapattinam - A government warning that high waves could strike again as aftershocks rattled Indonesia sent thousands fleeing in panic Thursday from the coastline of southern India, correspondents reported.
The latest quake measuring 5.2 on the Richter scale hit northwest of the main Sumatra island city of Medan shortly after 04:00, after two quakes measuring 5.1 and 5.2 the previous evening.
"This is not big enough to cause tidal waves," said Fauzi of the Indonesian Meteorology and Geophysics Office.
"The waves are coming," people yelled as they fled on foot, buses and any mode of transport they could find.
The defence and home ministries sounded the warning to evacuate 2km inland after a new quake rattled Indonesia.
People ran for cover
In Port Blair, capital of India's battered Andaman islands, people ran for high ground fearing a sudden surge in water levels, a correspondent said.
Civilians, aid workers and police joined the rush along the Tamil Nadu coast here where thousands died in Sunday's tsunamis.
The Press Trust of India (PTI) reported that "panic gripped the coastal belt of Nagapattinam" after the alert.
In neighbouring Thanjavur district, top administrator J Radkrishnan called for people to evacuate immediately.
Further south in Kerala state, chief minister Oommen Chandy said the government had information the sea could rise around noon and people should be on the alert, PTI said.
Chandy said district administrations had been asked not to allow people to remain within two kilometres of the sea, but urged people not to panic.
Rattled by shocks
Indonesia's disaster-hit province of Aceh was rattled by the latest in a series of powerful aftershocks early on Thursday but the tremors were not enough to create a repeat tsunami, seismologists said.
A gigantic 9.0 magnitude tectonic shift 150km off Aceh on Sunday unleashed a powerful tsunami that wreaked havoc on shores around the Indian ocean in one of the worst natural disasters in living memory.
More than 81,000 people have been killed across the region, at least 45,000 of them in Aceh on Sumatra's northern tip.
The death toll in India reached 10,850 Wednesday, with many thousands of people still missing, mainly in the Andamans, according to official figures.
- AFP
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