A strong undersea earthquake rocked Indonesia's Aceh province early on Wednesday, killing at least 97 people and sparking a frantic rescue effort in the rubble of dozens of collapsed and damaged buildings.

Maj Gen Tatang Sulaiman, chief of the army in Aceh province, said at least 97 died while four people were pulled from the rubble alive. Most of the deaths were in in Pidie Jaya, the district closest to the epicentre.

Another four or five people are still believed to be buried, but it is not known if they are dead or alive.

"Hopefully we would be able to finish the evacuation from the rubble before sunset," said Sulaiman.

The National Disaster Mitigation Agency said 273 people were injured, about a quarter of them seriously.

Some 245 buildings were seriously damaged or destroyed, mostly in Pidie Jaya, including 14 mosques and the remainder largely dwellings and shop houses. Roads also cracked and power poles toppled over.

 

The US Geological Survey said the shallow 6.5-magnitude earthquake that struck at 5:03am (22.03 GMT on Tuesday) was centered about 6 miles (10km) north of Reuleut, a town in northern Aceh, at a depth of 11 miles (17km). It did not generate a tsunami.

For Acehnese, the quake was another terrifying reminder of their region's vulnerability to natural disasters. More than 100,000 died in Aceh after the December 26, 2004, earthquake triggered a devastating tsunami.

The world's largest archipelago, Indonesia is prone to earthquakes due to its location on the Pacific "Ring of Fire," an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin. The 2004 quake and tsunami killed a total of 230,000 people in a dozen countries, most of them in Aceh.

Source: The Telegraph