Anchorage: A strong earthquake on the Russian side of the Bering Sea briefly prompted a tsunami advisory on Tuesday for parts of the Pacific, including Alaska's remote Aleutian Islands and Russia. The National Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer, Alaska, canceled the advisory because the tsunami no longer posed a threat.

Officials at the warning centre had cautioned that waves could reach up to 3 feet (0.91 meters) above the tide level. But waves later were reported to be only 6 inches above tide at the sparsely populated Shemya, Alaska, site of a remote Air Force station in the extreme western Aleutians.

The quake was initially measured at magnitude 7.4 when it struck just after 3:30 pm AKDT in the Komandorskiye Ostrova region of Russian, roughly 1,400 miles (2,253 kilometers) east of Anchorage.