US Tsunami center cancels alert for Indian Ocean

WASHINGTON: The US National Weather Service (NWS) cancelled a tsunami warning for all areas of the Indian Ocean after a powerful 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck off the Andaman Islands between India and Myanmar.

The NWS's Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a bulletin saying "sea level readings indicate that a significant tsunami was not generated" following the quake.

"Therefore, the tsunami watch issued by this center is now cancelled," the agency said.

India's national tsunami warning center said earlier it had issued no alert in the wake of the earthquake.

"We are monitoring all data on water levels and no anomaly has been observed. Everything is normal," Ravichandra Vedula, an official with the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services in the southern city of Hyderabad, told AFP.

The quake hit at 1:55 am (1955 GMT) around 163 miles (263 kilometers) north of Port Blair, the main town in the Andamans, and was around 20.2 miles (33 kilometers) deep, the US Geological Survey reported.