A team of seismologists has said a huge wave-generating quake capable of killing as many people as in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami could strike off the Indonesian island of Sumatra. They said the city of Padang is in the firing line. The group led by the prominent scientist John McCloskey, a professor of the Environmental Sciences Research Institute at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland on Sunday issued the warning in a letter to the journal Nature Geoscience. They said the peril comes from a relentless buildup of pressure over the last two centuries on a section of the Sunda Trench, one of the world's most notorious earthquake zones, which runs parallel to the western Sumatra coast. The letter gave no timeframe for this event but warned starkly of the danger for Padang, a city of 850,000 people that lies broadside to the risky segment. <br/><br/>In March 2005, McCloskey warned that the December 26 2004 quake had built up major stress in an adjoining part of the fault to the south. He declared a temblor in the region of 8.5 magnitudes with the capacity to generate a tsunami was imminent and urged the authorities to beef up preparations. But McCloskey was proven right within two weeks. On March 28 2005, a quake measuring 8.6 erupted at Simeulue Island, generating a 10-feet Tsunami.