NEARLY 400 people have been killed after a massive tsunami swept crowds off a beach leaving bodies scattered along the shoreline of an Indonesian city.

The catastrophic wave, triggered by a 7.5 magnitude earthquake, crashed into Palu on Sulawesi island - causing utter devastation.

Indonesia's disaster agency said up to 384 people had been killed with initial reports showing "victims died in the rubble of a collapsed building".

Spokesman Sutopo Purwo said: "We have not received comprehensive reports yet because communications are cut.

"Many bodies were found along the shoreline because of the tsunami, but the numbers are still unknown."

Horrifying footage shows the terrifying moment people run and scream after the tsunami smashed the region.

The video - reportedly taken on top of a shopping mall - shows the wave building up just off the shore.

A few seconds later, the 7ft high wave can be seen crashing into the beach and flattening houses in its path as the whole area becomes submerged.

Nugroho said the status was unknown for "tens to hundreds of people," including dancers and performers at a beach festival in Palu.

Dwikorita Karnawati, who heads Indonesia's meteorology and geophysics agency, BMKG, said panic gripped the city after the wave struck.

She said the situation was "chaotic" with people "running on the streets" and buildings collapsing.

The quake rocked central Sulawesi in Indonesia just hours after a smaller tremor killed one and injured another 10.

The US Geological Survey said the magnitude 7.5 quake was centred at a depth of 6miles about 35 miles northeast of the town of Donggala, Sulawesi.

Indonesia's meteorology agency initially issued an early tsunami warning for people in Central Sulawesi and West Sulawesi provinces, but this has since been lifted.

Earlier on Friday, the same area was hit by a magnitude 6.1 earthquake that killed one person, injured 10 and damaged dozens of houses.

An official with the local disaster agency, Akris, said: "Many houses have collapsed. It happened while we still have difficulties in collecting data from nine villages affected by the first quake. People ran out in panic."

Donggala resident Mohammad Fikri said by telephone that he ran from his house but there wasn't great panic in his neighborhood.

He said: "All the things in my house were swaying and the quake left a small crack on my wall.

"But this was not the first time. Last week we felt an earthquake that had a stronger tremor so this time we didn't panic, just avoided the buildings and now everything has returned to normal."

A series of earthquakes in July and August killed nearly 500 people on the holiday island of Lombok, hundreds of kilometres southwest of Sulawesi.

Indonesia sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire and is regularly hit by earthquakes.

In 2004, a big earthquake measuring 9.1 struck off the northern Indonesian island of Sumatra, triggering a tsunami across the Indian Ocean that killed 226,000 people in 13 countries, including more than 120,000 in Indonesia.