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AMBON, Indonesia - An earthquake measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale rocked Indonesia's Maluku islands this week and triggered a small tsunami that killed at least two people and left three missing, an official and reports said Friday.

"What happened was a small tsunami," Maluku governor Karel Albert Ralahalu, who visited the tsunami-hit village on Buru island, told reporters. He did not elaborate.

The Republika daily quoted Buru deputy district chief Bakri Lumbessy as saying that the quake Tuesday left three people dead after waves as high as five metres (16.5 feet) swept away at least 116 village houses.

Most of the village's 1,200 residents had fled to the hills to escape the tsunami, Lumbessy was quoted as saying.

The quake, which rocked several islands in the eastern Indonesian province of Maluku, also damaged hundreds of homes in five other villages on Buru island, the paper said.

Police in speedboats and villagers in wooden fishing boats were still searching for three missing children, the Detikcom online news agency reported.

A six-year-old girl, a toddler and an eight-month-old baby were feared dead, after The tsunami hit Batu Jungku village, which sits just 300 metres (yards) from the beach.

Indonesia's Aceh province was devastated by a tsunami which hit nations around the Indian Ocean after being triggered by a 9.3-magnitude quake off Sumatra island. Some 168,000 Acehnese were killed.

Indonesia sits on the Pacific "Ring of Fire", where the meeting of continental plates causes high volcanic and seismic activity. Maluku province lies at the meeting point of the country's two main chains of volcanoes.

During the authoritarian rule of former President Suharto, Buru island was a prison colony where dissident lawyers, professors and activists suspected of being communists were held.

Agence France-Presse