BANGLADESH

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre says a tsunami watch has been issued for the entire Indian Ocean, including Bangladesh after an earthquake on Wednesday.

The alert also affects Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, Australia, Myanmar, Thailand, Maldives, Malaysia, Pakistan and Singapore.

India has issued a tsunami watch for the Andaman Islands and its eastern coast.

Mild tremors shook parts of Bangladesh including Dhaka, Chittagong and Sylhet around 2:45pm following an 8.7-magnitude earthquake off the west coast of northern Sumatra.

Dhaka University's earth observatory's caretaker professor Humayun Akhter said, "The tremor in Bangladesh resulted from the earthquake in Sumatra. The tremor registered a 3.8 magnitude on the Richter scale."

The US Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake was detected about 33-km deep in the ocean, some 495 kilometres south-west of Banda Aceh, Sumatra.

USGS said earthquakes of this size "have the potential to generate a widespread destructive tsunami that can affect coastlines across the entire Indian Ocean Basin".

The quake was felt as far away as Singapore, Thailand, India and Bangladesh.

The region was devastated by a 2004 tsunami that killed about 230,000 people in 13 nations.