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Two quakes panic tsunami survivors

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 predawn temblor earlier Monday on 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.

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.

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 west coast villages.

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.

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.

[Last modified January 25, 2005, 09:44:59]