In this report:

• Tsunami Unlikely
• Tremors, a ruined factory

JAKARTA, Indonesia (Reuters) -- At least six people were killed and more than 30 injured when a powerful earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale rocked remote islands in eastern Indonesia, police and government officials said on Monday.

They said the death toll from the quake, which struck Mangole island late on Sunday night and sent houses sliding into the sea, could well rise because of damage to local towns and a timber factory.

"At least six people have been killed by the quake and 37 are seriously injured. We are still collecting information from other areas," Karim, an official at a local district head office, told Reuters from Mangole, near the quake's epicenter and 1,250 miles (2,010 km) northeast of the capital Jakarta.

Karim said the quake had destroyed dozens of houses in Falabesahaya town, from where he was speaking, and razed more than 50 houses in at least two other towns on the island.

"The death toll and injuries may rise because we haven't heard from the other districts yet," he said, adding that Falabesahaya was the only town on the island of more than 17,000 people which had telephone lines.

The town's name means "waves as big as houses," a reference to the heavy seas brought by the monsoons about this time of year.

A spokesman for the meteorology and geophysics office in Jakarta said tidal waves from the tremor were unlikely.

"A tsunami is unlikely to happen...because of the structure of the rock," he said.

Residents scrambled to higher ground from coastal areas amid fears the tremor would trigger giant waves. Locals said there were no signs of unusually large waves.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake was centered at 1.9 degrees south and 124.8 degrees east, or some 230 miles (370 km) south of the major city of Manado in Sulawesi. It struck at about 11 p.m. local time (1400 GMT).

Police said houses in the coastal areas fell into the sea and a main pier was also destroyed. Police and local government officials said the death toll could rise because hundreds of people were working at a timber factory owned by PT Barito Pacific when the earthquake struck.

A company spokesman in Jakarta said five workers died in the earthquake and 16 were injured. He said the factory's equipment was thrown into the sea and that the victims would be evacuated to Manado.

Residents contacted in the major cities of Ambon, the capital of Indonesia's spice islands, and Manado said they felt the tremors but there were no immediate reports of any casualties or serious damage.

Tremors with a magnitude of six on the Richter scale are powerful enough to cause widespread and heavy damage.

Mangole is one of the more remote of Indonesia's thousands of islands. Its economy is dominated by the timber industry.

In July, three tsunamis struck Papua New Guinea, at the eastern edge of the Indonesian archipelago, killing at least 2,100 people.

The scattered and mostly thinly populated islands of Indonesia are frequently hit by tremors.

The worst in recent memory was in 1992 when an earthquake, triggering tsunamis, shook the island of Flores in the province of East Nusa Tenggara killing at least 2,200 people.

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