JAKARTA, 28 July 2006 - Indonesian officials said on Thursday they plan to install sirens on mobile phone towers to alert coastal areas to potential tsunamis, following a second killer wave in the archipelago nation in as many years.

Installation of the sirens will be completed by the end of 2006, said Paryatmoko, tsunami early warning system coordinator with Indonesia's research and technology ministry.

"That is what the government is planning to do and complete by the end of this year," he said. He declined to give further details.

Indonesian officials have been criticised for failing to warn residents of an earthquake-triggered tsunami that struck the south Java coast on July 17, killing at least 628 people.

Research and Technology Minister Kusmayanto Kadiman said the sirens will be placed at towers operated by cellular telephone operators near beach areas in southern parts of Sumatra as well as Java, Sulawesi and Indonesian Borneo.

Kadiman said the sirens would blare as soon as meteorological agency officials hit a button to warn of a possible tsunami, the state-run Antara news agency reported late Wednesday.

The agency sent out text messages to some 400 government officials after the 7.7-magnitude quake that hit ahead of the tsunami this month but they contained only its longitude and latitude location, with no tsunami warning.

Kadiman said the sirens would be heard by people up to five kilometres away.

"Telkomsel has already reported having 485 towers and Indosat around 100 towers," Kadiman was quoted as saying, referring to Indonesian mobile phone operators.

Separately Jakarta police chief Adang Firman said police will coordinate distribution of earthquake and tsunami information with meteorological officials.

The information office at the national police headquarters will relay earthquake and tsunami information from the meteorological office to police headquarters in the regional, district and sub-district levels, Firman said.

Plans for an early warning system in Indonesia were drafted in the wake of the devastating December 2004 Asian tsunami, which killed 168,000 people in westernmost Aceh.

But an integrated system was not planned to be in place until the end of 2008.