A major earthquake hit a remote part of western Pakistan yesterday, killing at least 45 people and prompting a new island to rise from the sea just off the country’s southern coast.

Tremors were felt as far away as the Indian capital of New Delhi, hundreds of kilometres to the east, where buildings shook, as well as the sprawling port city of Karachi in Pakistan. The United States Geological Survey said the 7.8 magnitude quake struck 235 kilometres southeast of Dalbandin in Pakistan’s quake-prone province of Baluchistan, which borders Iran.

The earthquake was so powerful that it caused the seabed to rise and create a small, mountain-like island about 600 metres off Pakistan’s Gwadar coastline in the Arabian Sea.

Television channels showed images of a stretch of rocky terrain rising above the sea level, with a crowd of bewildered people gathering on the shore to witness the rare phenomenon.

Officials said scores of mud houses were destroyed by aftershocks in the thinly populated mountainous area near the quake epicentre in Baluchistan, a huge barren province of deserts and rugged mountains.

Abdul Qadoos, deputy speaker of the Baluchistan assembly, told Reuters that at least 30 per cent of houses in the impoverished Awaran district had caved in.

The local deputy commissioner in Awaran, Abdul Rasheed Gogazai, and the spokesman of Pakistan’s Frontier Corps involved in the rescue effort said at least 45 people had been killed.

Local television reported that helicopters carrying relief supplies had been dispatched to the affected area.

The army said it had deployed 200 troops to help deal with the disaster.