7.6 MAG QUAKE ROCKS INDIAN OCEAN...

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Two Quakes Rock Indian Ocean, Japan Less Than 15 Minutes Apart
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By Mark Tannenbaum and Aaron Sheldrick

Aug. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Two potentially destructive earthquakes struck minutes apart in the Indian Ocean and Japan today, generating tsunami alerts for India, Myanmar, Indonesia, Thailand, Bangladesh and Japan.

The larger of the two quakes was a magnitude-7.6 temblor that hit the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean, and it was followed less than 15 minutes later by a 6.6-magnitude quake in Japan southwest of Tokyo.

The Andaman quake struck at a depth of 33 kilometers (21 miles) at about 1:55 a.m. local time and was centered 260 kilometers north of Port Blair in the Andaman Islands, or about 825 kilometers west of Bangkok, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

A tsunami warning was in effect for as long as three hours after the quake struck for parts of India, Myanmar, Indonesia, Thailand and Bangladesh, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

The U.S. Pacific Tsunami Warning Center retracted an earlier statement that a potentially destructive tsunami had been generated near the quake epicenter.

A magnitude-9.1 earthquake that hit off the coast of Aceh in northern Sumatra in December 2004 triggered a tsunami that swept across the Indian Ocean, leaving more than 229,000 dead or missing from Southeast Asia to eastern Africa.

In Japan, the national weather agency said a magnitude-6.6 earthquake struck Tsuruga Bay area southwest of Tokyo early today. The USGS measured the quake as a magnitude-6.4. A tsunami warning was issued and a 30-centimeter (1-foot) wave hit the coast about 20 minutes later, NHK Television said

The earthquake struck at 5:07 a.m. local time 20 kilometers below the seabed, about 170 kilometers southwest of Tokyo near the Izu peninsula, the agency said on its Web site.

There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

To contact the reporters on this story: Mark Tannenbaum in New York at mtannen@bloomberg.net; Aaron Sheldrick in Tokyo at asheldrick@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: August 10, 2009 17:40 EDT