The US Geological Survey said the magnitude 7.5 quake was centred at a depth of 6miles about 35 miles northeast of the town of Donggala, Sulawesi
AT least 48 people have been killed after a powerful tsunami smashed into an Indonesian city.
A video taken on a smartphone shows the wave hitting the city of Palu after a magnitude 7.5 earthquake hit the country.
The footage - reportedly taken on top of a shopping mall - shows the wave building up just off the shore.
A few seconds later, the 7ft high wave can been seen crashing into the beach and flattening houses in its path as the whole are becomes submerged.
The exact death toll is not yet confirmed, but local TV report a minimum of 30 killed.
According to reports, several people are missing after the wave hit Palu as well as the nearby town of Donggala, an area with a population of 600,000.
Five people have reportedly been killed - but it is not clear if this was a result of the earthquake or tsunami.
Dwikorita Karnawati, who heads Indonesia's meteorology and geophysics agency, BMKG, said panic gripped the city after the wave struck.
She said the situation was "chaotic" with people "running on the streets" and buildings collapsing
Such was the power of the wave that it washed a ship ashore.
Indonesia's national search and rescue agency said will deploy a large ship and helicopters to aid with the operation.
But agency chief Muhammad Syaugi said he had not been able to contact its team in Palu.
The quake rocked central Sulawesi in Indonesia just hours after a smaller tremor killed one and injured another 10.
The US Geological Survey said the magnitude 7.5 quake was centred at a depth of 6miles about 35 miles northeast of the town of Donggala, Sulawesi.
Indonesia's meteorology agency initially issued an early tsunami warning for people in Central Sulawesi and West Sulawesi provinces, but this has since been lifted.
Earlier today, the same area was hit by a magnitude 6.1 earthquake that killed one person, injured 10 and damaged dozens of houses.
An official with the local disaster agency, Akris, said: "Many houses have collapsed. It happened while we still have difficulties in collecting data from nine villages affected by the first quake. People ran out in panic."
Indonesia's National Disaster Mitigation Agency said one person died in the shake earlier today when they were crushed by a collapsed building.
Donggala resident Mohammad Fikri said by telephone that he ran from his house but there wasn't great panic in his neighborhood.
He said: "All the things in my house were swaying and the quake left a small crack on my wall.
"But this was not the first time. Last week we felt an earthquake that had a stronger tremor so this time we didn't panic, just avoided the buildings and now everything has returned to normal."
A series of earthquakes in July and August killed nearly 500 people on the holiday island of Lombok, hundreds of kilometres southwest of Sulawesi.
Indonesia sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire and is regularly hit by earthquakes.
In 2004, a big earthquake measuring 9.1 struck off the northern Indonesian island of Sumatra, triggering a tsunami across the Indian Ocean that killed 226,000 people in 13 countries, including more than 120,000 in Indonesia.
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