And heeding the fears of a new tsunami disaster, hundreds of thousands of people - from this city on the northern shores of Sumatra, to the coasts of Malaysia, Thailand, India and Sri Lanka, fled their homes in the dark for high ground.

After a massive earthquake, measuring 8.7 on the Richter Scale struck undersea off Indonesia late Monday, warnings were issued around the region, sparking panic in a region of frayed nerves.

Nearest the epicentre of the quake, at least two people were confirmed dead on the outlying Indonesian island of Nias and police said there could be further fatalaties. Hundreds of houses had collapsed in the island's capital Gumung Sitoli, the reports said.

In Banda Aceh, there was no damage reported from the quake but mass panic in a city devastated just three months ago.

On foot, in cars and on motorcycles, thousands of panicking residents fled for high ground, ignoring officials' pleas for calm in their race for safety.

"When the earthquake happened, I rode my motorcycle to the airport because I was very afraid the tsunami would hit again," university student Heri told

Others tried to reach nearby hills as the screams of children echoed through streets that were temporarily plunged into darkness by a power outage.

One man in Peurada village, in Sumatra's western Aceh province, was searching for his relatives on a motorcycle.

"I'm trying to find my family, they are all women, they were very scared and ran out of the house," he said.

In Thailand, where thousands died in December, traffic was bumper-to-bumper as people streamed out of the famed Patong beach on the tourist island of Phuket, and thousands gathered on nearby hilltops.

"I was told by my boss that the tsunami might happen, so I and other people went up to the hills nearby. We stayed there for hours, but we started going back after we were told it was safe. No one panicked," Phuket resident Apichart Kongkheun told Thai television.

Hundreds of people, with children yanked from their beds and still wearing pajamas, gathered at the Phuket town hall for hours during the night, sleeping on the lawn and in pickups. But they all started heading home once authorities declared it safe.

Fishermen took their boats out to sea to ride out any possible waves, where they would have a better chance of keeping their boats intact, he said.

In Malaysia, the tremors from the quake were also felt in the capital Kuala Lumpur, sending residents of hotels and high rise buildings fleeing into the street.

"I was sleeping and felt the bed shaking just after midnight" one woman who lives on the sixth floor of a downtown apartment block told AFP.

In Sri Lanka, where more than 30,000 died in the disaster in December, residents moved to temples and churches and rang bells to wake up coastal neighbourhoods to leave their homes while police toured districts to urge people to move inland.

In the eastern coastal town of Pottuvil, men women and children grabbed what ever valuables they could and were on the move, local resident Mohamed Jauffer told AFP by telephone.

In India, an alert was issued in the Andaman Islands and all along the southern coast.

A Red Cross official in Nagapattinam in the southern state of Tamil Nadu said people had run inland after the reports.

"All the people living near the sea shore are running away after they saw what appeared on television (the warnings)," K. Illakuvan told AFP.

"They are so scared. They have taken whatever (of their) little belongings in their make-shift shelters and are running far away from the sea," he said.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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