Obama issues disaster declaration for American Samoa

Washington - US President Barack Obama on Tuesday declared a "major disaster" in the US territory of American Samoa, where a tsunami struck after a magnitude 8.0 earthquake.

Obama's action frees up federal funds for disaster relief and other aid. The Federal Emergency Management Agency was sending officials to the remote Pacific island to assess the situation.

Over 100 people died in American Samoa and neighbouring Samoa, local reports said.

 A number of coastal villages were swept away, and reports said the death toll was bound to rise as people who were evacuated to higher ground after the shake returned to lower levels when The tsunami warning was lifted.

More than 100 people died when a tsunami triggered by a magnitude 8.0 earthquake hit the Pacific island state of Samoa, according to management disaster officials in the capital Apia quoted by Radio New Zealand on Wednesday.

A number of coastal villages were swept away, and reports said the death toll was bound to rise as people who were evacuated to higher ground after the shake returned to lower levels when The tsunami warning was lifted.

Reports from Apia, the capital of Samoa, said some holiday resorts on the south coast of the main island Upolu had been destroyed by the tsunami, which sent waves up to 800 metres inland, and an unknown number of tourists were missing.

The US Geological Survey put the magnitude of the quake, which was located about 204 kilometres southwest of Samoa, at 8.0 on the Richter scale after earlier estimating it at 8.3.

As aftershocks continued to hit the two Samoa states, seismologists reported two further quakes measuring 5.6 and a third of 5.8 in the South Pacific.

The Pacific tsunami Warning Centre lifted its alert to countries across the South Pacific about five hours after the first quake and people in Samoa were reported to be returning to the sites of their homes to inspect the damage and search for the missing.

The centre said tsunami waves up to 1.5 metres had been recorded in Pago Pago, the capital of American Samoa, and up to 0.7 metres in Apia.

Civil defence officials in New Zealand, 2,685 kilometres away from the quake's epicentre, issued an alert for the country's entire coastline after the Pacific tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii said a 3-metre tsunami was travelling across the Pacific at about 800 kilometres an hour.

It lifted its warning after the sea rose only 40 centimetres at East Cape, but an hour later said a wave of 80 centimetres had been measured at the same place and said more could be expected.

It urged people to stay away from beaches and not take boats out to sea.

Radio New Zealand said reports from Apia noted that several children were among the dead, including two swept away from their mother by a wave as they tried to race to high ground and a 4-year-old boy missing after a boat was swamped near the small island of Apolima, between Samoa's main islands, Upolu and Savaii.

The main village on another small island, Manono, was reported to be underwater, but most residents made it to higher ground before The tsunami hit.

Reports said tsunami warning and evacuation procedures worked well on Samoa, where most residents among the 220,000 population who lived along the 400 kilometres of coastline were moved to safety before the seas rolled in.

"It caused a lot of panic to most of the country this morning, as children are preparing to go to school and people ... to work," a correspondent told Radio New Zealand.