Aid agencies have pledged cash and rushed teams to assess damage and help the injured after a major earthquake and a series of powerful aftershocks shook Indonesia?s Sumatra island.

US-based Catholic Relief Services said it has committed an initial $50,000 to the earthquake recovery effort. ?Between the earthquakes and aftershocks, the damage seems to be more widespread than initially thought,? CRS Indonesia Country Director Rich Balmadier said in a statement carried on Reuters AlertNet Web site (www.alertnet. org).

?We are concerned about the vulnerability in rural villages, where the houses are modest and less equipped to withstand massive impact,? he added. Australia pledged A$50,000 (US$42,000) in emergency aid yesterday through the Indonesian chapter of the International Red Cross.

?This assistance will help in early impact assessments and to support deployment of Indonesian emergency medical teams and transport critical relief items to the affected areas,? said Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.

?Australia is in constant contact with the Government of Indonesia and stands ready to provide further assistance if requested,? Downer said in a statement.

Southwest Sumatra suffered the worst damage from Wednesday evening?s 8.4 magnitude quake that also triggered a tsunami warning. The cities of Padang and Bengkulu suffered damage but assessments are still underway. A series of aftershocks yesterday, one of them measuring 7.8, caused further panic and triggered tsunami warnings that were later cancelled.

Walls of buildings in Bengkulu had cracked, but most homes did not appear to have collapsed, although a school was badly damaged and the ceiling of the main hospital had also come down, a Reuters photographer said. The mayor of Padang, the capital of West Sumatra, said many people were trapped under collapsed buildings. World Vision Indonesia said relief teams were due to leave yesterday to assess the impact of the quakes.

?We are sending assessment teams to Bengkulu and West Sumatra today,? World Vision Indonesia National Director Trihadi Saptoadi said in a statement, adding that the real impact of the quakes remained unclear.

US-based International Medical Corps and Direct Relief Internation said they had already mobilised relief efforts.

IMC said it was working with its Indonesian partner Ambulan 118, which had deployed an emergency response team to support health care workers in southern Sumatra.

Indonesian social-aid organization Muhammadiyah, Direct Relief?s largest local partner, was gathering needs assessments from its network of local clinics throughout the island, Direct Relief International said in a statement on AlertNet.

<B>Indonesia lucky to escape tsunami according to seismologist </B>

Indonesia escaped being hit by a devastating tsunami after an earthquake off Sumatra because the wave it triggered was forced away from the coast and out into the Indian Ocean, an Australian expert said yesterday.

Seismologist Mike Turnbull, at the Central Queensland University, said the earthquake on Wednesday created the opposite effect to the massive 2004 quake that caused an Indian Ocean-wide tsunami that killed 283,106 people.

?It was certainly big enough to cause a devastating tsunami and close enough to shore,? Turnbull told Reuters.

He said the ?earthquake mechanism? ? the way the seabed ruptured ? caused the 2004 tsunami to head towards Sumatra, while Wednesday?s quake saw a tsunami travel southwest, away from land.

?In this case the plate bodies that cause the earthquake ruptured in a way that saw the water thrown forward to move away from Sumatra. It was totally different to the Boxing Day 2004 mechanism,? said Turnbull.

?As a result Sumatra did not suffer from a devastating tsunami. There was a tsunami created by the earthquake, it just travelled in a southwest direction away from land.?

The quake hit 130 km (80 miles) southwest of Bengkulu, on Sumatra island, killed at least six people and buried many more under buildings. The quake was caused as result of thrust faulting at the boundary of two tectonic plates ? the Australian plate and the Sunda plate.

Sumatra was pounded by aftershocks yesterday after the world?s most powerful earthquake this year.

Turnbull said aftershocks could result in a different type of rupture that could send a tsunami towards land, but this was unlikely.