DHAKA: Pakistan’s largest city Karachi, home to around 18 million people, could be ‘wiped out’ by a tsunami.

Officials said on Wednesday after a drill simulating a major earthquake in the Indian Ocean, reports The Straits Times.

The test, which one carried out a day earlier simulating another quake off Indonesia, was designed to check an early-warning system set up after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami which killed more than 230,000 people.

The exercise organised by the United Nations was based on a hypothetical 9.0-magnitude quake in the Makran Trench, where the Arabian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet, off the coast of Pakistan.

‘This would create waves of 0.9m to 7m high that could reach Karachi in 11/2 hours,’ Tauseef Alam, the chief meteorologist who was supervising the tests, told media.

‘This could wipe out the city as the waves would be immensely powerful.’

BDST: 2032 HRS, SEP 10, 2014