Japan's meteorological agency has issued a tsunami warning following a powerful quake off western Indonesia.

Three people were killed and 35 injured in the quake, measuring 7.5 on the Richter scale, which struck Indonesia's Sumatra island on Wednesday afternoon.

The undersea quake struck at 3:08 pm local time, some 312 kilometres west-southwest of the North Sumatra capital Medan, according to the US Geological Survey.

The quake was followed by an aftershock measuring 5.5 on the Richter scale.

However, authorities said that there was no possibility of a 'destructive tsunami'. The tsunami might be a local one and it would affect areas within a 100-kilometre radius of the epicenter, they said.

The quake triggered panic among locals, most of whom ran out of their buildings, said news agencies.

A massive quake, measuring 9 on the Richter scale, struck off Sumatra's coast in 2004, triggered a tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people in a dozen countries, most of them in Indonesia.