US Navy handout aerial photo shows the devastation along the tsunami-stricken coastal region near Aceh, on Indonesia's Sumatra island. An earthquake measuring 8.2 on the Richter scale rocked northern Sumatra in the same Indonesia region which provoked the Asian tsunami disaster in December, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said.(AFP/US Navy-HO/File)
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The government in India's remote Andaman and Nicobar islands said it had issued a preliminary tsunami warning on Monday but was not yet evacuating people, after an earthquake struck near Sumatra.
"We are on the job," Lieutenant-Governor Ram Kapse told Reuters by telephone from the islands' capital Port Blair. "We have alerted all the police stations to alert the public in coastal areas."
Kapse said he had not felt the earthquake himself, and had not issued any orders to evacuate people from the coast.
"There is no report of any damage," he said. "We have issued an initial warning. If there is any problem, we will evacuate."
More than 7,000 people are thought to have died when the Dec. 26 tsumani struck the Andaman and Nicobar islands, which lie 1,200 km off India's mainland, close to Indonesia and Myanmar.