Tokyo , Jakarta  - Powerful earthquakes hit northern Japan and eastern Indonesia Thursday, prompting tsunami warnings in two of the world's most seismically active countries.

A magnitude-7 quake struck off the Pacific coast of the Japanese island of Hokkaido at 9:21 am (0021 GMT) and generated waves measuring 10 to 20 centimetres that hit the eastern coast of Hokkaido about 40 minutes later, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

The agency lifted its tsunami warning a short time later.

Police said there were no reports of injuries or damage, but about 10,000 residents in Hokkaido and Iwate prefectures had been temporarily advised to evacuate because of the tsunami warning.

Minutes before the Japan tremor, the Indonesian quake struck islands in North Maluku province, also triggering a tsunami warning and causing residents to flee their homes in panic, seismologists and officials said.

The tsunami alert was cancelled about 40 minutes later after no tidal waves materialized, seismologists said. There were no reports of casualties or damage.

Indonesia's National Meteorology and Geophysics Agency measured the quake at a magnitude of 7.6 and said it occurred at a depth of 10 kilometres.

The US Geological Survey put the quake at a magnitude of 6.6 on the Richter scale and said it occurred at a depth of 93 kilometres.

It struck about 7 am (0000 GMT) and was centred off Halmahera Island, about 122 kilometres north-west of Ternate, the provincial capital of North Maluku.

Residents and office workers in Ternate ran out of their homes in panic, particularly after a television warning that the quake might trigger a tsunami.

Kalbi Rasyid - a local government spokesman in the West Halmahera district, the region closest to the epicentre and about 2,800 kilometres north-east of Jakarta - said in a telephone interview that there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage but assessments were continuing.

Elshinta private radio reported that the ground shook for about 30 seconds.

The Japan Meteorological Agency warned residents that they could expect aftershocks over the next few days after Thursday's quake hit at a depth of 20 kilometres in the Tokachi area.

Hokkaido airports and a freeway resumed operations after being temporarily shut down because of the tremor.

The quake was the third to hit Asia in two days. On Wednesday, a magnitude-6.1 quake hit the southern Iranian province of Hormuzgan, killing six people and injuring 46.

Indonesia and Japan sit on the Pacific "Ring of Fire," an area prone to seismic upheaval because it lied on the edges of tectonic plates.

On Tuesday, two people died and 60 were injured after a magnitude-5.6 earthquake struck Indonesia's South Sumatra province.

The 2004 Boxing Day tsunami was also triggered by an earthquake off the north-west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. It killed 230,000 people in a dozen Indian Ocean countries, 170,000 of them in Indonesia's Aceh province alone. (dpa)