Almost three people lost their lives and 25 others were injured in the powerful earthquake which hit western Indonesia on Wednesday, according to officials.

The U.S. Geological Survey said that the earthquake which struck near Aceh province had a 7.5 magnitude on the Richter scale and had the epicenter under the island of Simeulue, 198 miles off the cost of Sumatra.

According to local residents, the earthquake which struck Simeulue at 1508 (0808 GMT) lasted about a minute.

The quake was felt on a 185-mile distance in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital. Here people left their offices because of the tremors.

Ahmad Yushadi, Aceh resident said: "Everything shook very strongly for more than a minute, and I ran along with the others. I heard people screaming in panic," the Associated Press reports.

According to the head of the Indonesian Health Ministry's disaster center, Rustam Pakaya, 25 people were injured and three people were killed while many building in Simeulue suffered damages from the quake.

He said: "People have evacuated to the mountains," BBC News informs.

The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre and Thailand's National Disaster Warning Centre issued a tsunami warning for parts of the Sumatran coast just minutes after the earthquake.

Two hours later it was canceled due to the fact that sea gauges didn’t detect any large wave.

Indonesia with a population of 235 million people, located on the Pacific Ring of Fire, is prone to seismic activity.

On December 2004 the Aceh province, about 1,350 kilometers north-west of Jakarta, was hit by an earthquake of 9.0-magnitude on the Richter scale that triggered a big tsunami in the Indian Ocean. More Than 230,000 people were killed in the region, 170,000 of them Indonesians.

Three months later another earthquake of 8.7-magnitude on the Richter scale hit on Simeulue and Nias, a neighboring island, killing 1,000 people.