A powerful magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck off the coast of Indonesia's Flores Island before dawn on Saturday, killing at least 47 people, injuring dozens more and sending panicked residents fleeing toward higher ground as officials briefly warned of a tsunami.

The quake hit at 5:58 a.m. local time, centered about 68 kilometers (42 miles) north-northwest of the city of Ende in East Nusa Tenggara province, according to Al Jazeera. The shaking originated just 10 kilometers below the seabed — shallow enough to violently rattle Flores and the surrounding islands, with more than 500,000 people reporting very strong tremors and millions more feeling the ground move across the region.

Dozens of aftershocks followed throughout the day, the strongest measuring magnitude 6.1. Hours later, a separate 6.9-magnitude quake struck off Sumatra, though no damage had been reported there as of Saturday evening.

Buildings Down, Roads Blocked

Most of the confirmed deaths were concentrated in the Sikka, Manggarai and East Manggarai regencies, where NBC News reported the toll had climbed to at least 47 with roughly 50 people injured. Buildings collapsed across Flores, Manggarai and Sikka, and landslides blocked roads into the hard-hit Nagekeo regency, where communications were disrupted and rescue teams were forced to attempt access by ferry.

"THE QUAKE WAS MASSIVE, THE SHOCK WAS SO STRONG, WE WERE RESTING AT HOME WITH FAMILY."

That's how one 51-year-old Flores resident, identified only as Nona, described the moment the ground began to shake, in Al Jazeera's on-the-ground reporting.

Roughly 2,000 villagers in Nagekeo fled to temporary shelters as the scope of the damage became clear, and CNN reported hundreds more residents across the island abandoned their homes overnight, fearing aftershocks would bring down already-weakened structures.

Tsunami Warning Lifted

Indonesia's Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) issued a tsunami warning for coastlines near the epicenter almost immediately after the quake, urging residents to stay off beaches and away from riverbanks and move inland to higher ground. The agency lifted the warning later Saturday morning after monitoring stations detected no significant wave activity, though authorities continued urging caution given the ongoing aftershocks.

Indonesia sits astride the Pacific "Ring of Fire," where the collision of tectonic plates makes it one of the most earthquake-prone nations on Earth. Flores itself has a grim history with the hazard: a 1992 earthquake and tsunami off the island killed more than 2,000 people, a disaster still cited by disaster-management officials when warning coastal communities to evacuate quickly.

Search-and-rescue teams backed by Indonesia's national disaster agency were working Saturday to reach isolated villages cut off by landslides, and officials cautioned that the death toll was likely to rise as crews dig through rubble and reestablish contact with harder-hit areas. International aid offers were beginning to arrive by Saturday evening, though the scale of the response remained unclear pending a fuller damage assessment.