A powerful earthquake has struck off the coast of Indonesia, triggering a tsunami warning.
The huge 7.5 magnitude quake was recorded near the island of Sulawesi, east of Borneo, the US Geological Survey said.
Authorities lifted an early tsunami warning within an hour, although officials warned those in the area to remain vigilant as a number of aftershocks hit.
“We advise people to remain in safe area, stay away from damaged buildings,” Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, spokesman for the National Disaster Mitigation Agency, said in a televised interview.
He added that the national agency in Jakarta was having difficulties reaching some authorities in the area.
The US Geological Survey initially reported the quake as magnitude 7.7, but later downgraded it to a 7.5 reading.
Earlier on Friday, a tremor measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale hit the same area, destroying several houses, killing one person and injuring at least 10, authorities said.
However, Mr Nugroho warned the second quake had been felt “very strongly”, adding he expected more casualties and more damage to follow.
A series of earthquakes in July and August killed nearly 500 people on the holiday island of Lombok, hundreds of miles southwest of Sulawesi.
Indonesia sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire and is regularly hit by earthquakes.
In 2004, a big earthquake off the northern Indonesian island of Sumatra triggered a tsunami across the Indian Ocean, killing 226,000 people in 13 countries, including more than 120,000 in Indonesia.
Powerful earthquakes jolted the Indonesian island of Sulawesi on Friday, damaging houses and killing at least one person.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the strongest of two major quakes had a magnitude of 7.5 and was centered at a depth of 6 miles about 35 miles northeast of the central Sulawesi town of Donggala. The quake briefly triggered a tsunami warning.
An official with the local disaster agency, Akris, said “many houses have collapsed.”
“It happened while we still have difficulties in collecting data from nine villages affected by the first quake,” he told The Associated Press. “People ran out in panic.”
National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said communications with the region are disrupted.
“Our early estimation, based on experience, is that it caused widespread damage, beginning from (the provincial capital) Palu northward to Donggala,” he told MetroTV in an interview.
The area was hit earlier Friday by a magnitude 6.1 earthquake that based on preliminary information killed one person, injured 10 and damaged dozens of houses.
Indonesia is prone to earthquakes because of its location on the “Ring of Fire,” an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin.
In December 2004, a massive magnitude 9.1 earthquake off Sumatra in western Indonesia triggered a tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen countries.
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