Tuesday, March 29 2005 08:41 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Colombo/Bangkok/Sydney: Sri Lanka's Meteorological department today (Mar 29, 2005) withdrew its tsunami warning and said it was safe for coastal residents to return to their homes despite a submarine earthquake near Indonesia.

Met chief P M Jayatilake said they decided to withdraw the tsunami warning as there were no reports of unusual wave activity anywhere in the neighbouring countries within the Indian Ocean.

A more powerful submarine earthquake near Indonesia on December 26 triggered tsunamis and killed 31,000 people in Sri Lanka. Thousands of people had begun evacuating coastal areas overnight following the latest quake.

Thai officials also withdrew the tsunami warning early today, saying that the threat of a killer wave from a huge earthquake in the Indian Ocean had probably passed.

The country's meteorological department withdrew the warning at 2:30 hrs local time (02:00 IST), almost 3 1/2 hours after the quake struck off the west coast of the Indonesian Island of Sumatra.

"We are now telling people that they can return to their homes. We believe it's safe now. We believe that if it (a tsunami) would have happened, it should have happened by now," Chalermchai Aekkantrong, deputy director of Thailand's meteorological department, told the local ITV television network just before cancelling the alert.

No casualties were reported from the quake, although several buildings in southern Thailand were reported to have suffered cracks.

Chalermchai spoke after tens of thousands of people in southern Thailand heeded tsunami warnings issued about half an hour after the quake occurred at 21:40 hrs IST. Officials went on television and radio to urge residents of southern Thailand's Andaman coast to move to higher ground away from the sea because of the possibility of tsunami.

The quake was centred about 410 kilometers southwest of the Indonesian city of Banda Aceh, which was devastated by the Dec 26 tsunami, and had a magnitude of 8.7 according to the US Geological Survey.

The earthquake late last night raised fears of another tsunami like the one that devastated coastal areas around the Indian Ocean last December and claimed more than 174,000 lives.

Australian officials had also warned of a possible powerful tsunami hitting the country's western coast today after a massive earthquake in the Indian Ocean, despite other nations closer to the quake's epicenter withdrawing their warnings.

The threat of a tsunami apparently passed for the Australian territory of Cocos Islands after a 8.7-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Indonesia's Sumatra island, but the Bureau of Meteorology issued a high seas weather warning for the entire Western Australia state coast.

A 25-centimetre high tsunami was recorded at the Indian Ocean Islands where monitoring buoys are stationed, Australian meteorologists said.

The tsunami was observed passing through tidal gauges placed by the Australian Government at the remote group of 27 Islands, about 1,100 kilometres southwest of Sumatra Island.

The Dec 26 tsunami that devastated southern Asia was also detected at the same spot, measuring 33 centimetres, the Bureau of Meteorology said in a statement.

Seismologist Phil Cummins at Geoscience Australia estimated a tsunami could measure five metres or more by the time it comes ashore.

"I would still say that this thing has potential to have a large tsunami associated with it." "It seems perfectly reasonable to me that one should expect, one should be prepared for a tsunami of roughly the same size as that that happened on Boxing Day (Dec. 26)," he told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio.