A massive 7.5-magnitude earthquake hit the Indonesian island of Sulawesi and triggered a tsunami in Palu and Donggala.
A video uploaded to social media shows the apparent tsunami that hit the area after the quake.
He said that entire houses were swept away and families are reported missing.
Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, the spokesman, said that communications with the area in central Sulawesi are down. A search and rescue effort is being hampered by darkness, according to the report.
In 2004, a tsunami triggered by a quake off Sumatra killed 226,000 people around the Indian Ocean, including more than 120,000 people in Indonesia.
Indonesia is located on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an area of frequent seismic activity where most of the world’s earthquakes hit. The Ring of Fire also contains the majority of the world’s active volcanoes.