NEW DELHI, Dec 30: Tens of thousands of Indians fled in terror on Thursday from coastal areas devastated by tsunamis after the authorities sounded a new alert that a minister later admitted had been ill-judged.

The defence and home ministries issued the alert to evacuate two kilometres inland after a new quake shook Indonesia. Screaming people rushed inland on foot, buses and any mode of transport they could find in the southern states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and in Port Blair, capital of the Andaman islands.

Civilians, aid workers and police joined the stampede along the Tamil Nadu coast. "Run, the waves are coming," shouted a policeman in Nagapattinam, while Tamil Nadu's chief minister J. Jayalalithaa abandoned a trip to the broken fishing hamlet of Akkaraipettai.

Prime Minister Singh, due to tour the devastated areas by road, instead used a helicopter, officials said. By mid-afternoon, the entire historic church town of Vailankanni, in Tamil Nadu, was deserted as even police abandoned their posts and headed inland.

In Port Blair, the lieutenant governor and his family dashed for higher ground in their official cars, accompanied by a wail of sirens. Local officials said that apart from a few isolated areas, virtually the entire coastline of Kerala state was deserted.

Home Minister Shrivaj Patil defended the alert, which came despite assurances from meteorologists that the quake in Indonesia, which measured 5.2 on the Richter scale, was not big enough to cause tidal waves.

"We got information that a quake of about 7.5 on the Richter scale could happen," said Mr Patil. "If that happens, collectors (senior administrators) and other officials should take precautions. We cannot say definitely whether it will happen but precautions should be taken."

But junior minister for science and technology Kapil Sibal said he had "simply forwarded" a message received from a US-based company to the Home Ministry mentioning the possibility of a quake of up to 7.5 on the Richter scale off Indonesia.

"Some official in the home ministry may have issued this (as a warning) without giving any thought to it," he said. Prime Minister Singh shrugged off the panic.

"We took precautions because the warning was issued. An alert warning was issued to all states. The moral of this is we should develop an early warning system to deal with this kind of disaster," he told reporters in Trivandrum, Kerala.

An embarrassing picture emerged in the media Thursday of how India's bureaucracy bungled the first real alerts of Sunday's tsunami, losing precious time that might have saved lives.

India's air force was warned that a remote base on Car Nicobar islands had been flooded well before the giant waves hit the mainland coast hundreds of kilometers away on Sunday morning, the Indian Express said.

On the civilian side, the Meteorological Department sent a warning fax out to the former science minister and not to the incumbent. A massive aerial reconnaissance was underway Thursday to find those still alive on the isolated Andaman islands, home to endangered tribal people and close to the epicentre of the quake which triggered Sunday's killer tsunami. -AFP