BENGKULU, Indonesia (Reuters) - Indonesia's Sumatra island was hit by a series of aftershocks on Thursday after a powerful earthquake toppled hundreds of buildings, killing at least 10 people and burying many others.
In Bengkulu, nearly 800 houses collapsed and many more were damaged, but the full extent of the quake was still unknown because of the difficulty of reaching or contacting some areas.
many people were trapped under collapsed buildings.
Authorities said the situation was not as bad as first feared, while a seismologist added that the region was lucky to have escaped a tsunami similar to the one triggered by the more than 9 magnitude quake in 2004 that killed over 280,000 people.
"The damage is relatively less" than feared, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono
told reporters on Thursday.
People are better at responding to disasters than in previous years."
Indonesia suffers frequent quakes, as it lies on an active seismic belt on the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire".
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