One of the world’s strongest earthquakes struck Russia’s Far East on Wednesday as an 8.8-magnitude tremor set off a tsunami in the northern Pacific and prompted warnings for Alaska, Hawaii and south toward New Zealand.

One of the ten largest earthquakes ever recorded just struck Kamchatka, the sparsely populated Russian peninsula facing the Pacific. The magnitude 8.8 quake had its epicenter in the sea just off the Kamchatka coast.

The US Geological Survey has further upgraded the powerful quake off Russia to magnitiude 8.8 quake, which occured 133km south east of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.