India issued a tsunami warning for Andaman and Nicobar Islands and the eastern coast on Wednesday after a 8.7 magnitude quake in Indonesia shook major cities, causing panic and sending people fleeing onto the streets.

The Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Service issued a red
high-level warning for the islands, and also put out lower alerts for the coasts of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

India's tsunami warning center said waves measuring up to 6 metres were expected along parts of its eastern coast, which was heavily hit by the 2004 tsunami. Smaller waves were expected to hit the remote Andaman and Nicobar islands.

The US Geological Survey said the quake was centred 33 kilometres beneath the ocean floor around 495 kilometres from the provincial capital of Banda Aceh.

Said, an official at Indonesia's Meteorology and Geophysics Agency who goes by only one name, said a tsunami warning has been issued.

Indonesia straddles a series of fault lines that makes the vast island nation prone to volcanic and seismic activity.

giant 9.1-magnitude quake off the country on December 26, 2004, triggered a tsunami in the Indian Ocean that killed 230,000 people, nearly three quarter of them in Aceh