Deadly earthquake hits Indonesia

A powerful earthquake has hit the Indonesian island of Sumatra, flattening hundreds of buildings and killing at least 70 people.

The 6.3 magnitude quake struck close to the city of Padang in the west of the island, at 1049 local time (0349 GMT).

Rescue teams are trying to reach survivors but communications and electricity supplies

Rescue workers said hundreds of buildings had been brought down, many of these are likely to be small, wooden houses. have been cut.

As night fell, many people around Padang remained out in the open, too afraid or unable to return home.

The quake and a powerful aftershock had caused panic among residents on Tuesday morning, bringing many rushing out of their homes and offices.

"The houses were all swaying away, so were the things inside and lots of the houses collapsed," a man in Padang told the BBC.

Residents of some coastal areas fled to higher ground, but local officials said there was no risk of a tsunami as the earthquake happened under land rather than under the sea.

The epicentre of the quake was about 50km (30 miles) north-east of Padang, the capital of West Sumatra.

Electricity cuts are causing communication problems and it may be some time before the final number of dead and injured and the full extent of the damage are known.

Officials said 18 people had been killed in the town of Solok, while 16 were killed in Tanah Datar.

The mayor of Solok, Samsurahim, said he could not say how many people were still trapped in the rubble.

Local hospitals struggled to cope and medical teams hastily erected tents to treat many of the wounded outside.

Christelle Chapoy, from the aid charity Oxfam's earthquake response team.

"We have a standby emergency response team based in Yogyakarta [on Java], and they're collecting information from our local partners at this stage," she said from Banda Aceh in northern Sumatra.

The quake was also felt hundreds of kilometres away in parts of Malaysia, and several tall buildings in Singapore's business district swayed slightly.

Indonesia sits on the seismically active Pacific Ring of Fire, and experiences frequent earthquakes - as well as tsunamis triggered by underwater earthquakes.

Last year, more than 500 people died when a tsunami hit an area of the Java coast after an undersea earthquake.

And in the Asian tsunami of December 2004, more than 130,000 people died in Sumatra when waves destroyed swathes of the province of Aceh.