Indonesian city hit by tsunami after powerful quake

TIL Desk/World/Makassar(Indonesia)/ A powerful earthquake hit central Indonesia on Friday, causing a tsunami that slammed into a city on Sulawesi island with officials saying the tremor had levelled “many” buildings. The shallow 7.5 magnitude quake sparked terror among locals who fled into the streets and raced to higher ground fearing tsunami waves.

The disaster agency briefly issued a tsunami warning before lifting it. But dramatic video footage filmed from the top floor of a parking ramp spiral in Palu, a city of 350,000 nearly 80 kilometres from the quake’s epicentre, showed a churning wall of whitewater mow down several buildings and inundate a large mosque.

Rahmat Triyono, head of the agency’s earthquake and tsunami division, later confirmed the city was struck by a freak wave. People living hundreds of kilometres from the epicentre reported feeling the massive shake, hours after a smaller jolt killed at least one person in the same part of the Southeast Asian archipelago. There were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries after the latest tremor, but it was a higher magnitude than a series of quakes that killed hundreds on the island of Lombok this summer.