Earthquakes jolt Bombay, Indian ocean archipelago
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-03-14 21:56

BOMBAY- Earthquakes rattled the western Indian state of Maharashtra and the tsunami-hit Andaman islands in the Indian Ocean but no casualties were immediately reported.

A quake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale Monday jolted Maharashtra's state capital Bombay at 3.14 am local time (2144 GMT), the meteorological department said, adding its epicentre lay around the state's Koyna agricultural region in Satara district.

District officials said fissures developed in some houses.

A quake in the same region, the site of a large dam, killed some 200 people in 1967.

Correspondents said the tremors were felt in the high-rise business district of Bombay where people evacuated office blocks.

However, police had no immediate reports of casualties but P.D. Virbhadran, deputy chief of the the meteorological department, warned of possible aftershocks in the earthquake-prone region.

More than 20,000 people were killed in Gujarat state, north of Maharashtra when an earthquake measuring 6.7 Richter hit on January 26, 2001.

A second earthquake measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale hit the Andaman and Nicobar group of islands some 30 minutes after Bombay was jolted, the Press Trust of India quoted meteorologists as saying.

The epicentre was off Great Nicobar island's southern coast, they said. There were no immediate report of casualties on the island near Indonesia where scores of buildings were flattened by tsunami waves almost three months ago.

Andamans recorded more than 9,500 aftershocks since December 26 when an earthquake measuring 9.3 on the Richter scale unleashed tsunamis across the Indian Ocean that killed more than 273,000 from Indonesia to East Africa.

The tsunamis killed more than 16,000 people in India.

A tremor measuring more than five can cause serious damage.

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