BUOL (Indonesia) - THE death toll from a 7.5 magnitude earthquake that struck off the Indonesian island of Sulawesi has risen to six with more than 150 people injured, officials said on Tuesday.

Two more bodies were pulled from the rubble, adding to the four people already reported dead in Monday's quake, which sent thousands of people fleeing to higher ground in the middle of the night fearing a possible tsunami.

'We recorded six people killed in the quake and injuring some 158 people,' Mr Rustam Pakaya, head of the health ministry's crisis center said.

The district chief in the worst-hit area of Buol in Central Sulawesi said that about 1,120 houses had been flattened.

The quake struck in the early hours of Monday off the coastal town of Gorontalo. Authorities immediately warned that the quake was strong enough to cause a devastating tsunami, which did not materialise.

Indonesia was the country worst hit by the earthquake-triggered tsunami in December 2004 that killed more than 200,000 people in 11 nations across Asia, including over 168,000 people in Indonesia's Aceh province alone.

The Indonesian archipelago straddles several continental plates in an area known as the Pacific Ring of Fire, where seismic and volcanic activity is recorded on an almost daily basis. -- AFP