Rescuers combed through debris for survivors Saturday (Aug 15) after a powerful earthquake struck off Flores island in eastern Indonesia, killing at least 20 people and sending thousands fleeing.

As the full scale of the disaster unfolded, rescue official Fathur Rahman told AFP at least 20 people were confirmed dead from four different towns on the island, popular with tourists.

"From the reports we have received, 20 people have died, six are injured, and two are still buried," Fathur said by telephone from a boat on his way to Nagekeo regency, the hardest-hit area.

Two people were known to be trapped alive under rubble in the neighbouring Manggarai regency after the 7.7-magnitude jolt.

"Our focus will be on locating the victims who are buried under the rubble" said Fathur, adding the rescue effort had been complicated by landslides cutting off several roads.

Residents in Nagekeo, the area closest to the epicentre, raced for higher ground as the sea retreated earlier Saturday -- a possible sign of an approaching tsunami, AFP journalists witnessed.

A tsunami warning was later lifted but people were warned not to return to damaged buildings for fear that aftershocks may bring them down.

Dozens of aftershocks have already been felt, the strongest measured at a magnitude of 6.1.

- 'My family is safe' -

Yohanes Babo, 56, a resident of Nagekeo, said he was at a market when the earth started shaking in the early morning hours.

"The shaking was strong. Thankfully, we were already outside the house," he told AFP.

"People were panicking, running here and there. We're evacuating for the time being... and trying to get to the hills," he said, adding: "My family is safe. No one was harmed."

The epicentre of the shallow quake was located just off the north coast of the island, about 68 kilometres (42 miles) northwest of the coastal town of Ende, US and Indonesian authorities said.

Rescuers pull one dead body from the rubble of a building that partly collapsed at the port of Maumere.

Fathur said two people were evacuated alive from the debris and "one was found deceased", according to video footage released by the agency.

The full extent of the damage is still being assessed.

Lukas Lotar, a resident of Maumere about 2,500 kilometres (1,553 miles) east of Jakarta, recounted how the earth "suddenly started to shake and I panicked".

"Patients also fled the hospital, the jolt was big. I saw some walls were cracked," Lotar, a hospital customer service official told AFP.

The stricken area is comprised mostly of towns and villages with few, if any, high-rise buildings.

- Monitoring sea level -

Indonesia's Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) initially warned of possible tsunami waves following the quake and urged people to get to higher ground.

Long queues of people could be seen evacuating towns on foot, by motorbike and car, some piled into the back of pickup trucks.

"We have ended (the tsunami warning) but we will keep monitoring the sea level," said BMKG earthquake and tsunami director Wijayanto, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.

Indonesia and neighbouring countries experience frequent earthquakes due to their location in the Pacific "Ring of Fire" -- an arc of intense seismic activity stretching from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.

Flores was struck by a 7.7-magnitude earthquake in 1992, which triggered a tsunami and resulted in around 2,500 deaths.

Among Indonesia's history of deadly quakes is a devastating 9.1-magnitude tremor in 2004 that struck off the coast of Sumatra and triggered a tsunami that killed 220,000 throughout the region, about 170,000 of them in Indonesia.

The Boxing Day tragedy was one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history.

In 2018, a powerful quake shook the island of Lombok and several more tremors followed over the next couple of weeks, killing more than 550 people on the holiday island and neighbouring Sumbawa.

Later that year, a 7.5-magnitude quake and a subsequent tsunami in Palu on Sulawesi island left more than 4,300 people dead or missing.

Source: AFP

--Agencies