'We were sleeping. We woke up after our house was shaken and some of our windows opened suddenly,' said 45-year-old Sadasiba Mohapatra, a business executive who ran out of his Bhubaneswar apartment along with his wife.

'We felt as if our house will collapse. We stayed on the road for several hours,' he added.

The US Geological Survey immediately issued a tsunami alert for the coasts of India, Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. But the alert was withdrawn after a few hours when it became clear that no tsunami wave had been generated.

A 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean had devastated coastal areas in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Bangaldesh, India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives and had killed thousands.