Powerful quake sparks panic in Thailand & Vietnam

A strong earthquake with a magnitude of 6.1 struck western Laos near the border with Thailand on Wednesday, sending people screaming for cover as far away as Bangkok and Hanoi. The quake hit at 0857 GMT in the heart of the Golden Triangle where Thailand, Myanmar and Laos meet in what was once a notorious opium smuggling route.

People in the Thai capital Bangkok, roughly 880 kilometres (550 miles) from the epicentre, poured onto the street as high-rise buildings rocked. In the Vietnamese capital Hanoi, hundreds of people fled office towers and hotels when the city's tall buildings started to sway.

China's Seismological Monitoring Network, using a different scale, reported the quake at a strength of 6.6 while Thailand's meteorological department said a 4.7 magnitude aftershock hit at about 1005 GMT.

Officials in the four Thai provinces near the Laos border – Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Nan and Lampang – all said that they were still investigating the effects of the quake, but no serious damage or injuries had been reported.