Two quakes, and rumors of third, rattle nerves in Asia

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.