The quake hit just off the remote island located near Sumatra on Wednesday, triggering panic across the region lashed by the earthquake-triggered 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed 168,000 people in Indonesia.

'The majority of the population have not returned to their homes. Many are still in the hills while others are just in makeshift shelters built near their houses,' Simeulue's local government spokesman Abdul Karim said.

According to government data, besides the three dead, 51 people were slightly injured, 33 houses and buildings were heavily damaged and 81 others sustained light damage.

An official from the Aceh provincial disaster mitigation centre Iskandar said that he was on his way to Simeulue with a team to help assess any further damage across the island, which is home to nearly 80,000 people.

Simeulue was one of the islands closest to the 2004 quake's epicentre, but the tsunami killed fewer than 10 people there partly because the population recognised the receding sea as a sign of disaster and fled inland.

In 2005, entire villages on Simeulue were destroyed by a quake which killed at least 17 people.

Villagers return home, clean up after deadly Indon quake
Shaky villagers returned from the hills to repair homes damaged by a powerful earthquake on a remote Indonesian island that killed three people and injured more than 50 others, officials said on Thursday.

Authorities were still tallying the damage on Simeule but early reports said many buildings were damaged or destroyed.

At least one major bridge also collapsed, said local government official Nirda Ihsan.

Ihsan said many people on the island fled to higher ground after the quake fearing a tsunami.

By Thursday, most had returned, he said.

'Many people are cleaning up their homes and fixing damaged furniture,' he said.

It was not clear how the three people died. Media reports said most of the injuries occurred as people ran or jumped from swaying buildings.

Indonesia sits on the Pacific 'Ring of Fire' where continental plates meet, causing frequent seismic and volcanic activity.

Wednesday's quake sparked a local tsunami alert as well as a warning along Thailand's Andaman coast, which was also hit by the 2004 tsunami. -- AFP

Those two quakes also caused damage on Simeule, which is home to around 75,000 people.

Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago with a population of 235 million people, is prone to seismic upheaval because of its location on the 'Ring of Fire,' an arc of volcanos and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin. -- AP