Two quakes rattle nerves in Asia; little damage reported

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Powerful earthquakes sparked panic in two countries Monday, nearly a month after a quake triggered a deadly wall of water that killed more than 160,000 people, but there was little damage, no reported injuries and no tsunami.

The two quakes, both magnitude 6.3, jangled nerves across the Indian Ocean region hit by the Dec. 26 tsunami.

Panic briefly spread through the streets of the Indian coastal city of Madras after residents felt an earthquake centered in the Bay of Bengal, about 930 miles away, near the Nicobar and Andaman Islands.

Samuel Cherian, the senior police officer in Campbell Bay on the southernmost island in the Andaman archipelago, said he was sitting in his office when he felt "a sudden jolt."

The aftershock was felt in Aceh province on the northern tip of Sumatra, but such tremors have been common in the past month and residents have largely come to ignore them.

Seismologists said the quake near the Andamans was clearly an aftershock of the 9.0 magnitude quake that struck off the coast of Sumatra a month ago. The two lie on the same fault line, said John Bellini, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colo.

But a pre-dawn temblor earlier Monday in the Indonesian island of Sulawesi -- nearly 2,000 miles to the east -- was not triggered by the Dec. 26 quake because they lie on different faults, Bellini said.

"It's just part of the normal seismic activity in that part of the world," he said.

Still, the Sulawesi quake, centered about 25 miles south-southwest of the city of Palu, sent thousands of panicked residents running to higher ground.

"They were shouting, 'Water, water' because they feared waves," said Dr. Riri Lamadjido, at the city's Undata Hospital, which received no injured patients as a result of the temblor. About 30 wooden houses and some shops were damaged, police said.

Although volcanoes have a relationship to earthquakes in that they are created by the movement of tectonic plates, experts say the idea that a massive quake will have a longterm effect on Indonesia's famed Krakatoa volcano is doubtful.

Krakatoa, which produced the world's most powerful explosion when it erupted in 1883 and killed an estimated 36,000 people, sits off the other side of Sumatra island from Aceh province.

Adjacent to the volcano is Anak Krakatoa -- "Krakatoa's Child" -- a small volcanic island that formed last century near the 5,905-foot Krakatoa. Anak Krakatoa erupted repeatedly in 1999, spewing volcanic gases and rocks into the air.

"I wouldn't necessarily look for (long-term) activity in volcanoes which can be correlated with this earthquake," said Tony Qamar, Washington state seismologist and research associate professor at the University of Washington.

Qamar said even a large earthquake, such as the one in central Indonesia, has a limited ability to disrupt an entire faultline.

"When an earthquake happens like that, it creates a stress on a fault, but that effect decreases dramatically as you move away," he said.

Volcanoes have their own earthquake activity, but it is caused by molten rock moving underneath the mountain, Qamar said. "Earthquake activity associated with volcanoes usually isn't that significant," he added.

Further reflecting the pervasive jitters in the region, thousands of people in western Thailand fled their homes early Monday after rumors spread that an earthquake had cracked four major dams.

The governor of Kanchanaburi province -- which was not hit by last month's tsunami -- went on the radio and the head of the government agency in charge of dams held a news conference to reassure people that the rumors were false and urge them to return home.

Meanwhile, U.N. officials said the number of relief camps in Indonesia's Aceh province has dropped by about 75 percent in the past week, with most people moving in with relatives and a few returning to their villages along the battered west coast.

The "dramatic decrease" in the camps -- from 385 to fewer than 100 -- was good news because relief settlements can cause survivors to become too dependent on outside help, said Joel Boutroue, head of U.N. relief efforts in Aceh.

Thaksin Shinawatra, the prime minister of Thailand, said some European nations have complained about the delay in returning bodies of their citizens who died in the tsunami, and promised his government would try to speed up the process.

The disaster killed hundreds of Swedes, Germans, Britons and other foreigners vacationing at southern Thailand's beach resorts.

"I have received phone calls from several European countries demanding repatriation of the bodies of their beloved. We have to hand over the bodies to the relatives as soon as we can," Thaksin said.

To help the delivery of aid to hundreds of thousands of survivors, governments in Indonesia and Sri Lanka were trying to ease tensions with indigenous rebel movements that threatened to hold up supplies.

Indonesian officials agreed to meet with Aceh rebel leaders this week in Finland to negotiate a cease-fire in the province, where separatists have been fighting for an independent homeland for nearly 30 years, according to Finland's Crisis Management Initiative, headed by former President Martti Ahtisaari.

Despite an informal cease-fire since the disaster, there have been isolated reports of fighting.

In Sri Lanka, a top Norwegian diplomat held surprise talks Monday with a Tamil Tiger rebel leader in an attempt to resolve a dispute over aid distribution on the island nation, where 31,000 people died and 1 million have been displaced.

The Tamil Tigers accuse the government of obstructing aid deliveries to rebel-controlled areas in Sri Lanka's north and east -- allegations the government denies.

On Sunday, Norwegian Deputy Foreign Minister Vidar Helgesen held talks with government officials to discuss creation of a joint body to ensure equitable aid distribution.

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Slobodan Lekic and Lely T. Djuhari in Jakarta, Indonesia, Ashok Sharma in New Delhi, India, Mike Casey in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, Shimali Senanayake in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and Typh Tucker in Portland, Ore., contributed to this report.