Another aftershock rattled West Sumatra's west coastal areas at around 4 p.m on Sunday. The tremor that had its epicenter southwest of Bengkulu made many residents to run out of their homes for fear.

Meteorology and Geophysics Agency staff in Padang Panjang Fitri said as many as 18 tremors had been recorded since 00.00 hours, four of them measuring four to five on the Richter scale. She said the intensity of the aftershocks that followed three major earthquakes last week had dropped and therefore she appealed to the people not to panic.

Padang, the capital of West Sumatra, and a number of cities and districts in the province were shocked when a maginitude of 7.9 earthquake occurred at 6.10 pm last Wednesday off the Bengkulu coast.

The quake was followed by a second tremor measuring 7.7 on the Richter scale on Thursday morning and another one measuring 6.3 on Friday morning.

The death toll in the three major quakes had reached 23, while a dozen others meanwhile had been injured in the quakes that had also devastated thousands of houses and buildings. Dozens of aftershocks continued to occur after the three major quakes.