Houses collapsed in the district, some 320 kilometres (200 miles) from the provincial capital Banda Aceh.

"A child died when a wall collapsed," Ema Suryani, a doctor at a health clinic in Lampahan city, told.

"We have received around 50 people with injuries suffered when the walls of their houses collapsed," added the doctor.

"There are around 30 people seriously injured, some with head injuries. The rest have only light injuries like minor cuts and grazes."

Injured people had been transported from several affected villages in two trucks, she said.

People ran outside in panic in Banda Aceh as the quake shook houses, and in Medan city to the south of Aceh province on Sumatra island.

"The quake was felt strongly for around 15 seconds, from Bener Meriah to Banda Aceh. People panicked and rushed out of their homes," national disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said.

Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra, is regularly hit by quakes. In 2004 a massive tremor sparked a tsunami that killed 170,000 people in the province and tens of thousands more in countries around the Indian Ocean.